Fine Gael is proposing that the pay rises for Ministers and top civil servants should be cancelled and a number of State agencies closed down as part of a package of measures to deal with the crisis in the state's finances.
The party’s deputy leader and finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, is also proposing to cut the number of junior Ministers by three and to achieve savings of €400 million by scaling back the public service decentralisation programme.
Presenting a party report entitled "Recovery through Reform", at a press conference today Mr Bruton, said that judicious measures to stabilise inflation were badly needed.
Among the changes he proposed were using the €1.5 billion carbon windfall levy accumulated by the ESB and other power generators to cut VAT from 13.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent.
He also proposed losing a stamp duty loophole used by developers and landowners to cut the rate for ordinary families, to freeze State charges like hospital and television licence fees and to have moderate pay deals to bring down inflation.
Mr Bruton rejected the charge that the Opposition was talking down the economy and insisted that it was bad policies that had driven down the economy.
"The biggest danger is a Government that remains in denial. If they don't recognise the problem the danger is that the will go for soft option policies that will simply paper over the cracks," said Mr Bruton.
He said that responsibility for the current crisis lay squarely with the Taoiseach and the Government.
"In the space of four years at the helm at Finance Brian Cowen steadily and deliberately pursued policies that sabotaged our economy's capacity to weather external shocks. Having steered the economy in to recession there is very little confidence that he can steer us out of it again," he said.
Mr Bruton added that Mr Cowen had made three critical blunders in his time as Minister for Finance that had driven the country into a recession.
He listed those blinders as:
Reckless inflationary budgets, driven by electoral needs, that killed our competitiveness;
Huge increases in day to day spending financed by unsustainable property tax revenues;
Stalled public sector reform and abandoned value for money discipline.
"These three blunders are at the heart of the emerging recession we are now facing," Mr Bruton added.
"Given his exceptionally poor performance in his brief over a four year period and his failure to introduce any radical reform measures one must be pessimistic over the prospects of Brian Cowen driving the type of change programme needed to help us out of the recession we are now facing."
He said that Fine Gael had spent years warning Brian Cowen of the dangers of reckless spending programmes, unsustainable property and consumer tax revenues and an unwillingness to change our approach to the public finances.
Mr Bruton proposed a series of actions to extricate the country from Brian Cowen's recession. The areas he identified were cutting out avoidable waste, helping keep prices and inflation down, changing the way the country's finances are managed, and reforming the public service.
After detailing his party's specific proposals Mr Bruton said the that the growth in net voted current spending should be limited to 4 per cent in 2009-11, capital spending should be accelerated in line with NDP commitments. He called for the abandonment of the "Existing Level of Service" estimates process saying that instead every Department should be required to secure 1 per cent savings each year.
This would create a €2 billion "Strategic Fund" for 2009 to finance priority welfare and service improvements like the indexing social welfare and keeping promises on the number of teachers, gardaí and medical staff.
