Labour Party leadership candidate Ivana Bacik has said the party "brought Ireland back from the brink" of financial ruin during its time in government with Fine Gael and that it is "time to move on" from its role in austerity politics.
Ms Bacik also acknowledged that “internal issues” were playing out in the party in the run-up to Alan Kelly’s resignation last week, despite insistence from party figures then that poor opinion poll performance and his association with austerity era decisions had driven his departure.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s News at One, Ms Bacik said it is “undoubtedly true” that actions taken by that coalition government between 2011 and 2016 were ones Labour “would never have wanted to nor wished to take in normal times”.
However, she said that “we shouldn’t forget that that was also the government that brought Ireland back from the brink of financial ruin and bankruptcy, and indeed, we shouldn’t forget that Labour have now been out of that government for longer than we were in it and it is time to move on”.
Her party colleague Duncan Smith TD last week said the party moved against Mr Kelly partially because of “the legacy of 2011 and 2016 and the catastrophe of being in that government…was something we couldn’t move on from”.
Appointment process
The party has refused to respond to questions about an appointment process for a backroom position which sparked concerns among members, but Ms Bacik conceded on Monday that in addition to misgivings over polling there were “internal issues that were going on that we can’t discuss because of (concerns) about private individuals”.
She said a combination of factors led to Mr Kelly’s decision to step down but that “things really took a very sudden and unexpected turn last week”. What has been described as an “emergency” meeting of members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) was convened last Wednesday evening after issues about the appointment process emerged.
Mr Kelly told Tipp FM last week that his colleagues had been “for a number of weeks” expressing concerns “about what we were doing and where we were going”.
Asked about the appointment issue, he said that when he was approached and asked to leave there were no other reasons and that he was “not going to get into internal Labour Party machinations”.
Senator Marie Sherlock dismissed reporting on these issues as “half baked stories and hearsay”.
Housing and health
Ms Bacik said she wanted to put Labour issues “front and foremost” in political debate and focus on public investment in housing, health and childcare.
In an email to councillors on Monday, she outlined that she will seek nominations from local party organisations for the leadership of the Labour Party.Candidates can be nominated by two members of the Parliamentary Labour Party or by five constituency councils.
Ms Bacik told councillors that she had been elected in the Dublin Bay South after campaigning for “social and economic equality”.
"These are the socialist and social democratic values that have been at the centres of my political life, from the days when I began campaigning for a woman's right to choose as a student in Trinity College, to last week when I was proud to chair the first public meeting of the Oireachtas committee on gender equality."
