McCreevy calls for consensus... then attacks FG

EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy called for an end to “Punch and Judy” politics yesterday but then immediately took a whack at former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.

In a recent interview, Mr FitzGerald claimed that Mr McCreevy had done “appalling damage” when he was finance minister from 1997 to 2004 in successive Fianna Fáil governments.

But Mr McCreevy shot back, insisting the former Fine Gael leader’s economic record was one of failure.

“Garret would know a fair lot about kind of wrecking an economy, I accept that, because his particular period as taoiseach from ’81 or ’82 onwards was singularly unsuccessful,” he said.

Ironically, he made the comments shortly before addressing a business function in Dublin in which he called for the setting-aside of party political differences in order to reach a “broad consensus” on solutions to the economic difficulties.

“There is no government here – or anywhere else – that could conduct the necessary fiscal retrenchment without becoming politically very unpopular.

“There is too much at stake for the normal, business-as-usual ‘Punch and Judy’ politics to continue to hold sway.”

But Fine Gael rejected Mr McCreevy’s call for unity.

“I can think of no time in our history when the Fianna Fáil government needed to be more forensically held to account and politically prosecuted for their failures and lack of vision,” said Fine Gael frontbench spokesman, Denis Naughten.

“There is no consensus between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the way forward. In reality, Charlie McCreevy is only echoing Fianna Fáil’s clarion cry of recent times,” he added. “It serves nobody’s interest but Fianna Fáil for Opposition parties to be silenced.”

Mr McCreevy refused to take personal responsibility for the housing bubble that built up during his time as finance minister. Neither did he accept that his low-tax policies contributed to the recent collapse in the public finances.

“I operated in, I think, a particularly successful government and I’ll let the record speak for itself… let history be the judge.”

Mr McCreevy also denied that there had been a lack of regulation of the banks during his time in office.

“I want to lay to rest one myth – that it was because of a lack of regulation.

“On the contrary, much of the regulation was there. It simply wasn’t enforced.”