As Pat Rabbitte prepares for his first Labour conference as party leader, he spoke to Mark Brennock
Tomorrow night he will condemn the Government as one of broken promises and poor economic management which backs the wealthy while shutting down hospital beds and social programmes. Seamus Brennan is the only Minister who can take a decision, he says, and unfortunately he is part of the neo-liberal, PD-centred group that is running the country.
But most of Pat Rabbitte's first speech as leader to a Labour Party conference this weekend will be devoted to trying to set out an alternative vision of society to that offered by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition.
If he gets to lead his party into government to implement his vision, that coalition will have had close to a decade in power. And Labour will have had close to a decade in opposition. Many elements of the party are still deeply demoralised by last year's disappointing election result, and by the prospect of a further long period in opposition. The circumstances make his task a hard one.
Parties in difficulty often reach for the new and the young to lead them at such times. Mr Rabbitte, who will be 54 later this month and has been a TD since 1989, does not fit into this category. However, he has advantages. He was elected by a clear majority of the party membership - against the wishes of many in the party's establishment - and thus has a high level of goodwill within the membership, which has grown substantially in the past year.
If some members blame last year's electoral strategy of leaving all coalition options open for the mediocre result, none of this blame attaches to Rabbitte. He made it clear in advance that he was unhappy with this strategy. He is an able Dáil performer and debater, and members hope that over time this will lead to his being seen as the main opposition leader.
He accepts it will be a long haul. "There is a necessity for us to use this period, which is likely to be a long period, to construct an alternative platform and that means focusing on most of the main policy areas and to bring forward policy work," he says.
While tomorrow night he will concentrate on setting out a left-of-centre political platform, he believes the key to success is growth of the party organisation in the next few years. In a speech to Dublin party members in February, he said there was no point in talking about Labour's political positioning unless the party also focused on organisation.
He is implicitly critical of past party organisation, saying Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin were better organised in third-level institutions over the past six or seven years than Labour. That situation has been reversed, he says, and membership in the universities has grown. "But there are still gaping black spots we have never really gone after in terms of an organisation."
He wants Labour members to become involved in community groups and local campaigns - something Sinn Féin does well in areas Labour would see as its traditional bases. There are large parts of the State where Labour is still not offering a proper choice. He wants young people to be encouraged to run for election "rather than being seen as rivals who must be contained".
To hear his alternative policy project we must wait until tomorrow's speech. He says the Government has adopted a right-of-centre "neo-liberal" approach, but that this has happened largely by accident due to the presence of the PDs in government, and the composition of the Cabinet.
"Ned O'Keeffe is correct. This is the most right-wing Cabinet since 1921. It is not just the PDs - it is somebody like McCreevy who ought to have been a PD, Martin Cullen who was a PD, Seamus Brennan who might have been a PD, Dermot Ahern who is very right-wing. Brian Cowen is a very ideologically conservative politician on economics."
They had untold resources to spend, but instead "squandered the boom". Labour's alternative must involve "the absolute necessity to defend the public realm, not to withdraw from public provision, whether it's public health or public education or public libraries or the public fire brigade or whatever it is".
But does the alternative not involve raising tax to pay for the "public realm", and hasn't this Government convinced everyone that tax is a bad thing? Firstly, he says, Labour is not seeking "a lot more billions of tax revenue" to fund its ambitions. Greater equity, a growing economy and borrowing for capital projects are what is required.
He acknowledges that there is "a ready ear" for PD rhetoric associating taxation with "confiscation". This is because there were many people in the workforce who remember the bad days of the 1970s and 1980s "when they and they alone bore the cost of running this State. Therefore any relief of that is welcome."
Labour, then, is unlikely to propose personal tax increases, and Mr Rabbitte does not argue with the low corporation tax rate. What is left are "capital taxes, property taxes, tax shelters, tax loopholes, tax incentives, tax inducements, new taxes, excise taxes and so on".
He has focused a lot on the tax-free status of stallion fees ("McCreevy would resign before taxing the bloodstock industry"), a high-profile, easily understood issue but one which would hardly transform the funding of the health services. He responds that the gap between Irish and, say, French health spending as a proportion of national income is now not that great. He criticises the Government for investing substantially in health without making the necessary structural reforms.
What does require billions is capital spending. "I wouldn't have any reservation and make no apologies for prudently borrowing to fund certain capital projects that in themselves contribute to the expansion of the economy in the future." He says that even "herself" (the Tánaiste) recently suggested that Ireland was "underborrowed", which he believes is a bit rich because she had roundly condemned Labour for making the same point during the last election campaign.
Then there is electoral strategy. Before the last election Mr Rabbitte said he would not serve in a Fianna Fáil-led administration.
Since he became party leader he has been less definitive, but states clearly that his preference is to replace the present administration with an alternative.
This week, he interrupted the ritual question on what his electoral strategy would be to say, "To win more seats". When the question was finished, he said: "I repeat that my focus is to win more seats for the Labour Party."
There was nothing on the horizon likely to unseat the Government, so there were four years to go "before it is necessary for me to focus on the bridge you are now lowering in front of my eyes". He would fight local, European and presidential elections first.
But surely the arithmetic suggests that a coalition with Fianna Fáil could be Labour's only option after the next election? He responds that, while currently even a hypothetical grand alliance between Fine Gael, Labour, the Green Party and Sinn Féin is still more than 20 seats short of a Dail majority, a no-Fianna Fáil government is still possible. That Fine Gael lost so many seats last time "only highlights that the same thing can happen in reverse".