Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore has urged voters not to give Fine Gael a “monopoly of power” and called on people to “switch to Labour” when they cast their vote on Friday.
Mr Gilmore said the opinion polls had made clear Fine Gael was going to be in government next week, but people had to decide if they wanted Labour to be part of that administration.
“It’s either going to be a single-party Fine Gael government, with a monopoly of power to one party, or it is going to be a coalition of Fine Gael and Labour,” he said.
“We already know now that Fine Gael is going to be in the next government. We don’t know if Labour is going to be in the next government.”
Speaking to reporters in Dublin this morning, Mr Gilmore said he believed voters were looking for “balance” in the next administration, with polls showing a majority favoured coalition government, “and if that’s what they want they then will need to switch to Labour in order to make that happen”.
Mr Gilmore was asked if he believed the controversy surrounding Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny’s teaching pension arrangements, which he pledged to give up yesterday, was over.
“Well I only know what I read in the newspapers and to be honest I was surprised somebody teaching for only four years would have a pension in the first place, but I don’t know enough about the detail of what the pension arrangement is or has been,” he said.
Asked for the Labour party’s stance on teachers’ pensions for TDs, Mr Gilmore said he had always believed people elected to the Dail should do one job, adding that he did not believe in double-jobbing or people drawing two salaries.
Later, addressing community activists and Labour supporters inside St Nicholas of Myra parish centre, Caraman’s Hall, Mr Gilmore said the concerns of families had rarely been discussed in the election campaign.
Mr Gilmore said the country was broken into 43 constituencies for the election, but children, who were not entitled to vote, represented a 44th constituency.
He said the campaign was not an accounting exercise. There were things that mattered that could not be valued in money, he said. “Greed is not good, especially when it’s at the top of our government and the banks.”
