LABOUR:LABOUR PARTY leader Eamon Gilmore has urged voters to "switch to Labour" to ensure the general election produces a coalition government rather than a "monopoly of power" for Fine Gael.
Mr Gilmore said recent opinion polls had made clear Fine Gael was going to be in government next week, but people had to take action if they also 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 political 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. What we don’t know is whether Labour is going to be in the next government.”
Mr Gilmore said polls also showed a majority of voters favoured coalition government, “and if that’s what they want they then will need to switch to Labour in order to make that happen”.
Speaking to reporters in Dublin yesterday morning, Mr Gilmore said he believed voters were looking for “balance” in the next administration.
He thought people wanted a government that addressed the country’s economic problems “in a balanced, a sensible and a fair way”. He added: “I don’t believe that that will happen if we end up giving a monopoly of power to one political party”.
He believed people wanted issues raised by Labour, such as literacy and investment in education, addressed by the next government. Asked about the wisdom or otherwise of his party’s “Gilmore for taoiseach” posters, the Labour leader said he thought every party aspired to lead a government and he was glad that option had been given to voters.
He stressed the campaign was not over and that Labour would continue to make its case ahead of voting on Friday.
Mr Gilmore was flanked by his party’s Dublin South Central candidates Cllrs Eric Byrne, Michael Conaghan and Henry Upton. Later, addressing community activists and Labour supporters in St Nicholas of Myra parish centre at Carman’s Hall, Mr Gilmore said the concerns of families had rarely been discussed in the election campaign. People were worried that their children who had emigrated would never come home and their grandchildren would be strangers.
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”. Child benefit payments should not be cut any further and there should be no more hikes in income tax for people earning less than €100,000, he said.
He said the election 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.” The election was about international economics and government budgets, but it was also about home economics and family budgets.
