FORMER Fianna Fáil minister for finance Ray MacSharry has described this week’s events as “very sad” for his party, but he suggested it was too late to change leaders ahead of the election.
Commenting on Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s handling of ministerial appointments, he said it was “very sad that this has evolved in the way it has for Fianna Fáil”. It would not and could not have happened in his time because ministers “didn’t have to resign until they had others in place”.
He said “my attitude always in leadership was to support the leader and defend him. And I’ve been many times out there defending Haughey through many heaves. But with that defence and that loyalty comes responsibility for the leader to know what he or she should do in the interests of themselves and the party”.
Asked if he believed Mr Cowen’s position was still tenable he said, “I don’t know. It’s too late now, but the attitude to the party is that we have 3,500 units of the organisation in every parish and half parish of the country and their membership is still there”,
Mr MacSharry, dubbed “Mac the Knife” because of his sharp cuts of public expenditure in the 1980s, gave the Government “two” out of 10 for its handling of health and warned that the HSE which controlled one-third of the entire budget, had to be taken back under ministerial control.
“I would never allow a situation where €15 billion or € 16 billion of taxpayers’ money would be handed over to an organisation to spend in whatever way they like. That is wrong, it’s not democratic and it will have to be changed,” he told a seminar in the Dáil of former parliamentarians.
He also said the National Roads Authority and the Higher Education Authority should be back under ministerial control.
Speaking afterwards he said health expenditure had “doubled the expenditure in a few short years and most of the population are not happy with the services being delivered”. And in looking for savings “it’s the more vulnerable that are being affected”.
He also claimed he would have been “quicker off the block with Europe to try and prevent the IMF coming in” and he criticised the European Central Bank saying it too had to take responsibility for what had happened.
The former EU commissioner, who described himself as “a party man ‘til I die” also said “I would have been quicker with the ECB to try and see what mechanism they had in place to help us when this was happening. It wasn’t just our regulator.”
