Fine Gael has said benchmarking public sector pay with the private sector should be continued if the process is made more transparent. Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter, reports.
While the party was a persistent opponent of the last benchmarking round and said the award in 2003 should not be paid, the party's official spokesman insisted last night that it had not changed its policy.
In a pre-Budget submission published yesterday, Fine Gael said the benchmarking system "as a means for deciding justified increases in public pay will be continued". Calling for greater openness in the process, it said the Government should negotiate a reform package to match any additional payment.
The spokesman said there was no change in the party's position, despite its opposition to the payment of an award last year which cost €1.3 billion. "Benchmarking was the greatest wasted opportunity to get reform in the public service last time round. That's why Fine Gael said it wouldn't support the payment of benchmarking last time round," he said.
"The taxpayer is entitled to see what he is getting for his money. That's why we're saying that any future benchmarking round must be open, must be transparent and the public must be able to see what they are getting for their money."
Fine Gael attacked the Government's economic record in its pre-Budget document, claiming that the public now paid twice as much tax as when the Fianna Fáil- PD coalition came to power in 1997. While calling for significant reform of the public sector, its finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said the Government's claim to run a "low-tax economy" was a myth.
The party wants to end what it calls the "charade of Budget Day" when tax-raising measures are introduced to meet the spending agenda set out weeks previously in the book of estimates. The tax and expenditure measures should published simultaneously to facilitate a detailed Dáil debate before the entire package is put to a vote of the House, it said.
In addition, Mr Bruton said ministers should sign a "compliance statement" in relation to their own spending programmes. Any breach of such statements should lead to censure in the Dáil.
At the publication in Dublin of a 27-page critique of the Coalition's economic performance, the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, said that reform and careful management of public expenditure would leave more money to spend on the weakest in society.
Mr Bruton, who wrote the Who Cares? document, said the Government had wasted the opportunity to improve public services in spite of more money available to it.
Dismissing the "Botantic Gardens socialism" of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, he said the Government had increased expenditure in the run-up to the 2002 election just as tax revenues were falling.
This helped the Coalition's election campaign but put pressure on inflation and the public finances once the election was over, with the Government resorting to stealth taxes to balance the books. Voters should be on the alert for a similar spending spike ahead of the next election, Mr Bruton said.
"If one looks across the key service delivery areas that the Government has a frontline role in, you see a litany of wastage, poor decisions, unplanned spending without specific targets, administrative staff prioritised over frontline staff and ultimately a pattern of Government spending that is giving a very poor return."
Such claims were immediately rejected by the Government chief whip, Mr Tom Kitt, who accused Fine Gael of "fuzzy thinking" on the economy.
Mr Bruton disagreed with demands from the ICTU for an increase to 20 per cent in the corporation tax rate of 12.5 per cent. He was also against a minimum effective taxation rate of 20 per cent for high earners, as proposed by Labour in its pre-Budget submission. It would be better to cap the aggregate amount of tax relief available to individuals under all schemes, Mr Bruton said.
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