Labour vows to try to undo low-pay cut

LABOUR will seek to undo the imminent cut to the minimum wage if returned to power next year, party finance spokeswoman Joan Burton has said.

Ms Burton said Labour would have preferred to see a salary cap imposed on public sector workers earning more than €200,000 a year. Asked if Labour would seek to undo the cut if returned to office, she said: “Yes. We would certainly like to do that.”

The cut was also criticised by Fine Gael energy spokesman Leo Varadkar.

He said the measure was all the more unfair when the Government had failed to reduce salaries for those public servants and politicians earning over €100,000 a year.

The two parties were also united in their criticism of the perceived lack of economic stimulus in the four-year plan. “The critical problem with the document is the fundamental question: where is the growth, where is the stimulus?” Ms Burton said. “Because without sufficient growth and stimulus, we are not going to be able to pay back the gigantic sums of money that the Government is committing to in terms of the current rescue of the banks.”

Mr Varadkar said there was “nothing” in the document to stimulate jobs.

The parties differed somewhat in tone, however, on the possibility of changing the plan, if and when they are in government.

Fine Gael said it had assurances from the European Commission that an incoming government would not be bound to any policy position in the plan.

Ms Burton, however, said that if the current Government agreed the plan with the EU and IMF, any change would have to be “negotiated” with those organisations. But Labour would certainly seek to renegotiate it, she stressed.

Ms Burton said the plan as a whole represented “the bill for 13 years of Fianna Fáil mismanagement and misrule”.

Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan said it was a “destruction plan” full of deflationary measures.

“The Government is deluding itself if it believes that these measures can bring about economic growth,” he said. “Even solely dealing with our structural deficit, this plan is in the main a list of deflationary actions that will deepen and lengthen the recession.

“The impact of these measures will contract the economy — and not one extra tax cent, or one public spending cut, will be used to reduce the deficit, as it will all end up servicing the debt being incurred for the banks.”