The leader of Fine Gael has said he does not expect Mr Michael Lowry will be back in his party after the next general election.
Mr John Bruton said yesterday he had made his position clear on the Tipperary North TD being allowed back into the party. "There are certain requirements which any individual has to have to be a member of Fine Gael which at the moment Michael Lowry could not fulfil."
He was recommending that people in North Tipperary vote for Mr Noel Coonan as the Fine Gael candidate in that constituency.
Asked when his party would move the writ for the Tipperary South by-election, Mr Bruton, speaking on the RTE This Week programme, seemed to indicate that they would wait until a general election. "My focus now is on the general election seeing when and where we will place our candidates for a general election in all of the constituencies in the country."
The Government was saying, he said, that it would not have a general election until 2002 but Mr Bruton did not believe that its current economic policies were sustainable until then.
"I see immense problems building up for the current Government. While this year's Budget, to my mind, made no economic sense it did make political sense if you are going to go for an early election."
Mr Bruton said up to 500,000 people from abroad would be needed to work in the State in the coming years. However, the State would not be able to absorb that amount of people.
Cultural acclimatisation, he said, would be very difficult because there would be nowhere to house these people and there would be tensions between Irish people who cannot afford a house and the people arriving from abroad also seeking homes.
"I don't think the Government has thought it out," he said.