With two weeks to polling day, a lot could still happen. A couple of key events this week showed how important it is for my party to keep the pressure on.
The first was the decision by Brian Lenihan to delay throwing another €10 billion at the banks, as per his agreement with the EU and the IMF. He says he did it because he felt his Government “didn’t have a mandate” to do it. In reality, he simply didn’t want to dirty his hands further by doing what, in any case, will have to be done. Perhaps he couldn’t bare to look his constituents in the eye so soon after being forced to give away more of their money. Better to let the next Government take the next step. I doubt he can even spell the word “responsibility”.
The other development was Fianna Fail telling fibs about our plans for transport. Michael Kennedy claimed that we were planning to hike fares. I issued a press release to counteract the spin and pointed out that CIE, in receipt of over €6bn since 1997, have left us with no integrated ticketing, no park and ride and no real time information.
The battle continues