Who Mr Gilmore, is guilty of economic treason now?

With an election clearly on the horizon the cut and thrust of the campaign has started in earnest. However there is a rather familiar tone to the content of the establishment party arguments. Rather then attacking the policies of Fianna Fail and the Greens - Fine Gael and the Labour Party have turned their attentions to Sinn Féin. They are engaged in a game of smoke and mirrors as they attempt to misrepresent our position. They see the threat and are attempting to create fear. This is nothing new, we have had all this before.

In 2007 Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour united in attacking Sinn Féin. They dismissed us as economic illiterates. They proclaimed that Sinn Féin in Government would see the collapse of our economy and predicted economic Armageddon if we held the balance of power. The phoney war with Fianna Fáil was put to one side, Sinn Féin was the real target. They then tried to out bid each other in the worst case of auction politics this state has ever seen. When Fianna Fáil and the PD’s promised tax cuts, Fine Gael and Labour promised more. It was Sinn Féin alone who refused to engage in such shameful antics.

Three and a half years later, let’s examine the evidence. The banking system has collapsed, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, working people are getting hammered through cuts and tax increases and our economy is on its knees. And guess what – Sinn Féin was not in Government. Our warning of the dangers of a property bubble, unsustainable public finances and light touch regulation in the banks has come to pass. This gives us no satisfaction but I am simply setting the record straight.

It is against this backdrop that we find ourselves here again. It is the political equivalent of ground hog day. Again Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour contrive to attack Sinn Féin and undermine our credible alternatives just as they did during the Lisbon campaign. The Labour Party is now defending everything they berated the Government for. They are facilitating the passing of the Finance Bill and Decembers Budget, have done a u-turn on the bank guarantee by making the taxpayer pay for private banking debt and are supporting the IMF/ECB bailout which will see this state borrow €35 billion on a high interest rate to put into wayward banks. Who Mr Gilmore, is guilty of economic treason now?