Brian Hayes hits out at ‘cut-and-paste’ Sinn Féin budget

Junior finance minister and European election candidate Brian Hayes is standing over his assertion that Sinn Féin’s budget proposals were based on a "cut-and-paste job" rather than proposals costed by his department.

This is despite a letter showing that the department undertook a “costing” exercise of Sinn Féin’s proposals for spending cuts and tax increases in the run-up to the budget last October.

Sinn Féin’s economic policies have come under scrutiny in the final days of campaigning for an election in which it is poised to make major gains.

Mr Hayes — a candidate in the Dublin constituency — said Sinn Féin has not outlined how it would achieve the €28bn adjustment which this country has undergone to get the budget deficit below 3% of GDP.

“They opposed every expenditure issue, yet they have not set out how they would raise €28bn additional euro and that’s the question they need to answer,” he said.

Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said Mr Hayes is making a political charge because he is “trying to convince people” that Sinn Féin’s alternative to water charges and property tax “does not exist”.

He said: “The alternatives do exist. We have shown categorically that there is a fairer way. And those proposals have been costed by the Department of Finance.”

Mr Doherty produced a letter signed by a senior official at the Department of Finance saying: “I enclose the costings, where available.”

But Mr Hayes said: “The idea that [the Sinn Féin] proposals have been costed just doesn’t stack up. Their pre-budget submission was based on parliamentary replies to questions. They did a cut-and-paste job on the replies to those questions and they made assumptions as to the amounts you could obtain through their tax measures.”

The Department of Finance has provided the Irish Examiner with some clarity on what a costing exercise involves. It said it has been a long-standing practice to provide the service to political parties of costing their budget proposals.

Because this is done on a confidential basis, it could not comment on what costing was done for Sinn Féin.

It provides the cost or yield of each measure “on their own merit, and on a standalone basis”, and “unlike in the costing of the budget, no aggregate savings or yields are provided”.

The department said the interaction of individual measures is not examined and “no impact is taken of the second round impacts of measures, such as their impact on economic growth, job creation, inflation, or their impact on tax buoyancy”.

The department also said it does not comment on the merits of each party’s proposals and does not take into account economic forecasts.

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