Opinion: Bertie is back - now poor will have to pay the price

WHEN Garret FitzGerald won an election in the early eighties he soon discovered the national accounts Charlie Haughey left behind him were in a far worse position than Fianna Fail were letting on.

This is hardly an excuse available to the current Taoiseach. This time Fianna Fail cooked their own books.

It has not even been two months since the election and already it is clear that Fianna Fail and Bertie sold more whoppers than Burger King.

Bertie promised to end hospital waiting lists in two years. That promise was dropped within days of his election victory. It doesn't even appear among the 400 bullet points in the Programme for Government.

As of today the Government has 648 days to fulfill this commitment and Labour will hold them to account on that.

Charlie McCreevy promised that, whatever else happened, there would be no health cuts.

Instead, within weeks of the election, 800 planned jobs in the health service have been cut. VHI bills have gone up 18 per cent. Charges for drugs have been increased and you will even have to pay to attend accident and emergency units.

Before the election Fianna Fail told us that all was well with the economy and from their February Ard Fheis they accused the Opposition of wanting to destroy it.

They talked about the bad old days of the eighties because Labour was honest enough to admit that, if we wanted a world class road and public transport system, then it was worth borrowing to pay for it.

Now it is clear that the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, will return a deficit this year. He knew in March that his Budget Day accountancy trick - using Central Bank money to massage downwards our national account figures - wouldn't wash in Brussels. But he kept the figures from us.

Now everybody except the minister himself accepts that our finances will go into deficit - after all tax revenues are down EUR500million on the minister's budget day predictions.

Labour was honest during the election. We said that more spending was needed and that we could not do all the things that the minister was planning.

We said we couldn't afford the National Pension Fund contributions to continue at their current rate for the next five years if we also wanted to invest in health.

We took some flak for this but we were honest.

Compare that approach with Fianna Fail's dishonesty. They said there would be no need for cuts - yet look what has happened since the election:

Accident and emergency charges hiked 26 per cent

VHI bills hiked by 18 per cent

Family medical charges up 22 per cent

800 health service jobs put on hold

A whopping 69 per cent increase in college fees

Air-sea rescue helicopters shelved (but not the new Government jet)

A proposed 15 per cent hike in ESB bills

It's even going to cost more to watch the Irish football team because of Government incompetence!

The truth is that Bertie Ahern went on a massive spending spree before the election. They used taxpayers' money to boost their own popularity. Now they want ordinary citizens to carry the can.

They even want to penalise the poorest of the poor in the third world. They have cut EUR32million from the overseas aid budget.

Right now, 12 million people in Africa are facing famine. The situation is worse than it has been since Bob Geldoff's BandAid. This is the meanest of the cuts - taking money from the mouths of the starving.

Remember Bertie campaigning around the world for a seat on the UN Security Council? He promised the world he would increase Ireland's aid budget. Now they have cut it - and made Ireland look like a nation of dodgy used car salesmen.

Worse still, these cuts hardly make economic sense.

Ireland spends less of its wealth on public services such as schools and hospitals than any other country in Europe. No wonder we don't get the services we deserve.

We have one of the worst infrastructures too. That makes it difficult for us to do business and be competitive. It adds to our cost base and endangers our economic future.

We need to improve that infrastructure now. Some progress has been made in recent years, largely thanks to funds from the European Union, but now that we are one of the wealthier EU members those funds are going to dry up. We need to fund our progress from our own resources.

And as the economy slows down now is in ideal time to kickstart it by ensuring investment in the National Development Plan. But instead, and for the second year in succession, Charlie McCreevy is taking money away from the roads programme.

So the man who poured money into the economy when things were good, now wants to take money out of it when things are bad - an approach that runs contrary to any economic textbook you'll ever read.

The irony is that Fianna Fail probably won the last election because they were trusted on the economy.

Now, as usual, it will be the least well off, from the global poor to those dependent on the drug refund scheme - such as asthma sufferers - who will suffer.

Fianna Fail are sowing the seeds of their election defeat in the first few months of their second term.

The last six months have been an exercise in hoodwinking the Irish people. But now the Irish people won't stand for it and are already preparing to deal with Fianna Fail's dishonesty.

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