Opposition must sort out banks policy

THE growing perception that Labour and Fine Gael are driving in opposite directions on the key issue of the banks may be the battered raft on which the current Government hopes to avoid drowning.

In 2007, a few hundred votes gave Bertie Ahern just that handful of seats necessary to enable him, rather than Enda Kenny, to cobble together this shambles of a government.

Gilmore, Kenny, Burton and Bruton must sort out this problem within days and certainly well before the last weekend before polling on June 5. And they must be seen publicly so to do.

Faced with a choice between the utterly horrible but familiar and the completely unknown and apparently confused and contradictory, even a statistically minor scattering of voters could hesitate.

This could prevent the kind of electoral killer-blow needed right now. The rotten apples will fall eventually, but time is the one essential commodity which the country lacks. Every minute lost now postpones recovery. And we could pass a point at which recovery becomes impossible in this generation. Neither Labour nor Fine Gael will like a compromise, but this is the first big public test of the viability of an alternative government.

Maurice O’Connell

Fenit Without

Fenit

Tralee

Co Kerry