Gormley’s cross-party consensus ‘confusing’

GREEN attempts to forge a cross-party economic consensus were branded confused and counter-productive last night.

Fine Gael and Labour did not try to hide their scorn at the way John Gormley had handled the issue as the opposition parties dismissed Minister Conor Lenihan’s call for a national government out of hand.

Five days after first floating the idea of a united economic approach, Mr Gormley sent party leaders a letter outlining his call for a meeting to exchange views on how to deal with the four year budget framework which must be presented to the EU next month.