Coveney rules out giveaway budget after local-election hammering

By Eoin English

Agriculture minister Simon Coveney has ruled out a renegotiation of the programme for government and a giveaway budget after government parties took a hammering in the local elections.

He said the electorate has used the election to send a strong message to government mid-way through its term that they are finding the going tough.

The message from the doorsteps was that Irish families have not seen the benefits of stability and the fragile recovery, and are struggling to pay their bills, he said.

"The Government is aware of this (and) that message has been reinforced today," he said. "People have taken their frustration out in the ballot box rather than in the form of protests and riots and that's a very admirable quality.

"They want to see the benefits of recovery in their homes and in their businesses. And that's not a surprise.

"We've had to manage an extraordinary crisis over the last three years, and we've have had to fix problem after problem. The solutions have resulted in hardship for people. But there is a context behind this.

"Ireland was a broken country three years ago, with no functioning political or banking system, and huge unemployment, and nobody would lend to Ireland, resulting in a bail-out programme.

"That has resulted in Irish people showing extraordinary patience and resilience over the last three years.

"Despite growth, and rising employment, a lot of people are still feeling hardship. They've made a very strong statement that they want to see benefits now."

He was speaking at the Cork city county centre this afternoon where FG looks set to hold its own, but Labour, which had seven seats on Cork City Council, is facing a wipeout, with Lord Mayor Cllr Catherine Clancy in a battle to hold her seat.

Mr Coveney said the focus of government over the next two years would be to ensure that more people see the benefits of recovery.

"People have grown tired of the difficult years, managing the crisis and asking more of them budget after budget," he said.

"It's a fatigue of negative messages and of the sacrifice they've had to make to get their country back on track and we are very aware of that at.

"We will redouble our efforts to bring Ireland to a new place - but in a responsible way. Anybody who believes some of the promises coming from opposition parties that Ireland can just write off all of its debt, that's not based in reality.

"We are doing the hard yards and we are making good ground. I think people, when they judge the government on its full five years in government - crisis management at the start and the fruits of good governance - we will see a different result than what we are seeing today."

But he warned there would be no giveaway budget later this year.

"That would be madness," he said. "What we are not going to do is have some form of giveaway budget to be popular in the short term following a difficult election, and finding that in doing that, that we are undoing all of the hard yards we've had to travel over last three years to try and fix so many problems," he said.

"We will be responsible in government, building on all of the sacrifices people have made so that we can get to a new sustainable and more optimistic future. Will certainly be in that place in two years."

"The people gave us a huge mandate in last general election to govern Ireland and to fix all the problems Fianna Fáil created.

"We have tried to do that as best we can. We have made some mistakes, clearly, and we are being punished for that.

"But we've also made huge progress and what we'll do now in the build up to the next budget is certainly learn lessons from this election campaign.

"We will put a budget together that is responsible but picks up some clear messages from this campaign."