LABOUR PARTY leader Eamon Gilmore has rejected charges that he is “wishy-washy” on the Croke Park pay deal and that he is guilty of “followership rather than leadership”.
The claims were made in an interview on Newstalk’s Breakfast show yesterday where presenter Ivan Yates said listeners were constantly criticising the programme for failing to get “straight answers” on policy matters from the Labour leader.
In relation to the Croke Park agreement, Mr Yates said: “Why can’t you say whether it’s a good deal for workers, whether people should vote Yes or No? It does seem that you’ve been very wishy-washy on this.”
Mr Gilmore countered that he had been very clear that there should be a national agreement. He had “welcomed the conclusion of that agreement” with the Croke Park deal.
“Issues of pay and public service reform should be matters that should be negotiated and agreed,” he said.
“But he was not prepared to “interfere in the ballot and there is good reasons why I won’t interfere in the ballot”.
Mr Yates persisted: “Why can’t you say you’d vote Yes then?” Mr Gilmore said he would not, “because that is to interfere in the ballot . . . to do so is going to bring politics into a ballot that should be about the merits of the agreement.”
Responding to a suggestion by Mr Yates that this was “followership rather than leadership”, the Labour leader said: “No, no, it’s responsibility.”
Asked for the party’s policy on water charges, Mr Gilmore said: “Well that is something that we’re actually looking at, at the moment.”
He added: “We have to look at what the European rules are on it; we have to look at the cost of metering.”
Meters had already been installed in a number of houses over the past ten years and the “anecdotal information” was that issues had arisen in this regard.
Asked if Cardinal Brady should resign, Mr Gilmore said: “I have never believed the Catholic Church should be telling the State what to do and therefore I don’t think that people in politics should be telling the Catholic Church what to do.
Whether Dr Brady stayed on was a matter for himself and his church, said Mr Gilmore.
Mr Yates, himself a former politician who served as minister for agriculture in a Fine Gael-led government said: “When we have you on, just after you go off air, we get loads of texts in, saying that we as interviewers haven’t got straight answers out of you.”
