Log In

Reset Password

Irish premier vows to stay

(AP Photo/Peter Morrison)Thousands of protesters in central Dublin protest about thestate of the country’s economy at the end of last month.

DUBLIN (AP) Prime Minister Brian Cowen insisted yesterday he won’t resign and plans to lead his party into an early spring election once the toughest budget in Irish history has been passed in full.

Cowen mounted a vigorous defence of his embattled leadership a day after lawmakers narrowly backed his slash-and-tax 2011 budget a key condition of Ireland’s humiliating international bailout to fund its runaway deficit and mammoth bank-bailout bills.

Cowen whose public approval ratings have recently fallen to a record-low eight percent stressed he wouldn’t call an early election until all budget cuts and tax hikes are approved, a process likely to drag into February. He insisted he wasn’t trying to delay the end of his government, but was serious about going to the voters on a platform of defending the latest austerity plans.

“It’s not about me trying to get a month or two in office, it’s about giving legislative effect to the budget decisions we’ve made. Then people will know we’re serious about our intent and purpose,” Cowen said in an interview on state broadcaster RTE.

Cowen said he resisted pressure last month to quit amid rising expectations that he could lose majority control in Dail Eireann, Ireland’s parliament. Cowen said he never considered resigning “because it’s absolutely critical that we complete the task at hand.”

In the event, Tuesday’s budget votes passed with Cowen’s two-vote majority in parliament intact.

The premier also dismissed speculation that lawmakers within his Fianna Fail party could try to oust him in hopes of boosting the party’s weak electoral prospects. Cowen said he expects to lead Fianna Fail pronounced “FEEN-uh fall” and meaning Soldiers of Destiny in Gaelic to an improbable seventh straight election win dating back to 1987.

Cowen said he was confident that, as the election day neared, voters would not be convinced by opposition leaders’ claims they could reduce Ireland’s deficit currently at a post-war European record of 32 percent of GDP, targeted for a reduction to just three percent by 2015 without enacting the same brutal cuts and tax rises as the government.

“You cannot credibly, honestly say to the people that we can get out of this problem by not raising income tax or cutting welfare,” he said.

But public fury over Fianna Fail’s mismanagement of the economy was evident as Cowen’s finance minister, Brian Lenihan, fielded live telephone calls from citizens on RTE.

“Will you struggle to pay your mortgage? Will you struggle to take care of your family?” asked one caller, who identified himself only as a Dublin hospital worker named Brian who expected to lose €2,000 from his net household pay next year because of higher taxes.

“I don’t object to paying my pay, but I do object that you refuse to pay your way. You do not live in the real world,” Brian told the finance chief. “Will any (lawmaker) be struggling to put food on the table in January?”

But Lenihan who has battled cancer while overseeing a string of emergency budgets and bank-bailout efforts said he had “spent 2 ½ years in my office working day and night because of the crisis we’re in.”

And he told the caller how two years of salary cuts to top politicians, with more cuts to be approved in a parliamentary vote on Friday, had disproportionately slashed the take-home pay of Cowen, himself and other Cabinet ministers.

He said Cowen’s gross salary two years ago was €€285,000 ($375,000) and €€174,000 net, reflecting deductions of 39 percent. But the latest cuts and tax hikes would leave the prime minister with €€214,000 gross and just €€102,000 ($135,000) net reflecting a new effective income-tax rate on higher earners of 52 percent.

“Everyone in this country has to contribute something in the present crisis,” Lenihan told the caller. “We did come to a position where our standard of living was one of the highest in the world and our wealth didn’t justify it. We have to face up to that.”