OPPOSITION PERSPECTIVE:FINE GAEL has outlined what party leader Enda Kenny called "tough but fair" proposals for next week's budget.
These include: a freeze on public sector pay and increments for 12 months for those earning more than €50,000 per annum; 5,000 voluntary redundancies in the Civil Service; and rationalising State agencies.
Other proposals include fees of €1.5 billion for banks availing of the Government guarantee and an earnings cap of €125,000 for pension relief.
There would be a public sector recruitment ban, apart from frontline services, and an end to the Government's decentralisation programme.
However, there would be no tax increases and no cuts in the capital programme.
The full detail and background to the proposals was set out in a document entitled Recovery Through Reform: A Budget Perspective.
Flanked by deputy leader and finance spokesmen Richard Bruton, and Kieran O'Donnell, Mr Kenny told a news conference in Dublin yesterday: "This scheme has to be targeted. You are entitled to borrow outside the normal guidelines for reform.
"What has happened in the past where redundancy packages took place was that the best people left. This would have to be a scheme that would be targeted and with conditions attached to it.
"You don't want a situation where, as applied previously, the better people left various sectors and were contracted back in very shortly afterwards."
Fine Gael want to get rid of 30 quangos as previously outlined by the party.
Mr Kenny said: "One, for instance, is the creation of an Office of Fair Trade where you would merge the Competition Authority and the Office of Consumer Affairs [now the National Consumer Agency]."
Defending the public sector reform and pay freeze proposals, Richard Bruton said: "This Government is going to borrow €10,000 for every family in the country next year, €10,000 the following year; it is going to ramp up public debt unless we address the reforms."
And with regard to bodies such as the ESB and CIÉ he said: "If the ESB is holding back competition, is holding back cost competitiveness, it has to be reformed.
"We're not talking about privatising here, we're talking about clear separation where there is competition within the sector. The same in CIÉ."
This had been Government policy for 10 years, "but what has happened to it? It hasn't been implemented. At some point governments have to say: 'Reform is my job.' That's what ministers are put here for."
Denying that the party's proposals were an example of "playing politics", Mr Kenny added: "We didn't play politics with the economy or the country last week when we nailed our colours to that mast."
