THE TAOISEACH had given Fianna Fáil an opportunity of a secret ballot on his future as party leader but Labour leader Eamon Gilmore wanted to know when he was “going to give the people the benefit of the secret ballot” to decide the future of his Government.

Brian Cowen told him during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil that the Finance Bill and pension legislation linked to the Budget had to be passed and it would all be done “one month sooner than last year”.

Mr Cowen also refused to give the Labour Party any Government time for its no-confidence motion in the Government. The Taoiseach said: “I have no interest in playing politics as usual with Deputy Gilmore in regard to taking his confidence motion.

“He can take it in his own time. Everybody knows it will be defeated. We have work to do and are going to get on with it.”

The Labour leader said the date for the general election was going “from one month to the next and it is clear that the Taoiseach’s strategy is to cling on to office for as long as possible in the hope that something turns up because your agenda is more about your party’s survival and fortunes than the good of the country”.

Mr Cowen said the “indicative timetable” had been given for the passage of the Finance Bill, “which will be passed one month sooner than it was last year”. Mr Gilmore “can take an indicative period beyond that when the dissolution of the Dáil will take place and an election held”.

Mr Gilmore had accused the Taoiseach of leading a “dysfunctional Government” and claimed “nobody is minding the shop while Fianna Fáil is trying to sort out its internal difficulties”.

He said the dysfunctionality had been demonstrated clearly by the fact that when French president Nicolas Sarkozy last week publicly launched an assault on this country’s rate of corporation tax, he saw “no Minister or anybody in Government publicly responding”.

Mr Cowen said Mr Sarkozy’s statement had been responded to last Friday by Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche.

Mr Gilmore accused the Taoiseach of living in wonderland. “First, the statement by President Sarkozy, with the greatest of respect to the Minister of State Deputy Roche, required a more forceful response from the Government than it received. At a minimum, it required that you, Taoiseach, pick up the telephone and contact him, but you were too busy making other telephone calls to do the country’s business.”

Mr Cowen said Mr Sarkozy was entitled to his view, one that has been expressed on many occasions. He said Ireland’s corporation tax regime was “simple and transparent”, unlike the complicated systems of allowances and reliefs that applied in some other countries which dramatically reduced their effective tax rates.

“Our corporation tax arrangements are compliant with the EU code of conduct on harmful tax competition,” he said.

“Our corporation tax yield as a percentage of GDP – our total tax revenues – is higher than the EU average and higher than in France.”