FG/Labour:The leaders of the alternative alliance, Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte, have again committed themselves to sacking ministers who waste public money when they spoke at separate events in Dublin yesterday.
Launching a five-point plan for accountable government, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the lack of accountability in the outgoing Coalition had damaged public services and the public's faith in politics. "Fianna Fáil and the PDs just set targets for what they can spend, not what they should achieve," he said.
"They have a blank cheque mentality that they apply to the whole country."
Mr Kenny said that in a Fine Gael-Labour coalition, ministers would be held accountable for implementing the agreed programme for government.
He also made a commitment to reviewing the freedom of information legislation and to reforming the Dáil so that there would be 50 per cent more sitting days, with the budgetary process being brought forward to allow scrutiny by the Dáil and Seanad. Mr Kenny said there would be a clear record of ministerial decisions to prevent "vanity projects" being funded by the taxpayer.
The authority of ministers and their top civil servants would be clarified so that no one could hide from their mistakes.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said he did not just want to change the faces around the cabinet table. "I want to change the way government functions in the interest of hard-working families."
He maintained Fianna Fáil had given up on the idea that the public service could serve the public and this was evidenced in the shift towards for-profit medicine.
"Labour's approach is the opposite. Rather than abandoning public service, we choose to reform it . . . We will not tolerate the waste of hundreds of millions that became the hallmark of the Cullen school of management. Ireland's system of public expenditure management needs to be modernised," said Mr Rabbitte.
Both Opposition leaders identified Ministers Martin Cullen, Dick Roche, Micheál Martin and Michael McDowell as those who had failed to deliver on targets.
Fine Gael said Mr Cullen had received 40 per cent of the votes in an online poll on the party's website asking which Minister visitors to the website would like to see sacked.
Speaking earlier during a tour of the Roscommon/South Leitrim constituency, Mr Kenny said Fine Gael was not for turning on its promises to lower taxes.
His comments followed suggestions by the Green Party that any coalition it might be part of would have to drop tax cuts if there was insufficient money to fund education and improvements in the health service.
Mr Kenny said his party's alliance "is with the Labour Party and we've set out our costed proposals" in taxation and other areas. But he added that the two parties "have left a substantial amount of €2.9 billion in that fiscal envelope for negotiation on our individual programmes outside the agreed programme".
Asked if Fine Gael would change its tax cut proposals, he said: "no, that's part of our contract, that's part of our programme. That's costed and put out there. That's our alliance for change."
The Fine Gael campaign bus stopped in Boyle in Co Roscommon where five years ago former party leader Michael Noonan was pelted with a custard pie.
It was a happier experience this time around where the Fine Gael leader and candidates, sitting TD Denis Naughten and Senator Frankie Feighan, burst into a verse of the party's unofficial anthem Oh What a Beautiful Morning during a stop for lunch.
They sang the line "everything's going our way" with the greatest gusto.