Parties in final play for power
RENTS will be frozen and evictions banned until at least the end of October by the incoming coalition government, Fianna Fail has said.
The party’s housing spokesman Darragh O’Brien, who is tipped to become housing minister, said the new government, if it takes office next weekend, will look to extend the emergency Covid-19 moratorium on rent increases and evictions for another three months beyond the current July 20 expiry date.
“The certainty has been helpful and has given peace of mind to a lot of people,” he told the Sunday Independent.
“In the short-term [with] the certainty that gives and stability it gives, it would be useful to extend it for another three months.”
It comes as the Sunday Independent can reveal that Cabinet ministers were warned of “World War III” over plans to end peat harvesting in the Midlands as tensions mount over the unprecedented green agenda of the Fianna Fail-Fine GaelGreen coalition.
Meanwhile, Eamon Ryan has been accused by one of the Green Party negotiators of “giving too much away” to Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin in the last hours of the talks that finalised the programme for government on Monday.
As the three party leaders make last-ditch appeals to their members to back the deal this weekend, there are still concerns that it will not secure the two-thirds support of Green Party members needed for it to enter government.
Green Party finance spokesperson Neasa Hourigan said Ryan had negotiated a carbon tax model with the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail that will end up hitting the most vulnerable and will also damage the Green Party.
“I think too much was given on the stuff that was important to me and that’s why I am not supporting it,” she told the Sunday Independent.
In the talks, Hourigan argued for carbon tax increases that would then be given back to taxpayers through direct payments to households. But the three leaders agreed a model that will see the €9.5bn raised from the tax over the next decade returned in welfare increases, retrofitting and farm payments.
Hourigan said there was no research to show this would be socially progressive.
“The only major tax increase is this environmental tax, it will do huge damage to people paying it,” she said.
“It’s going to upset people, you are linking climate action to something people are going to be really cross about and it is going to hurt the movement and those people.”
Hourigan said she also sought the protection of eligibility for welfare payments but was blocked, while the programme specifically states there will be no increases in income tax and USC.
“I am worried that what this document sets out will lead to cuts in basic services and social protection. People in lower income groups and welfare would suffer,” she said.
Eamon Ryan did not respond to calls yesterday. Green Party TD and negotiator Roderic O’Gorman insisted the deal does not allow for a return to austerity and warned he would quit the government if cuts are implemented.
“We argued back and forth on that, but that gives me real comfort that this will not be a government of austerity; I won’t support any subsequent move towards austerity,” he said.
Last night a joint statement signed by the Greens’ Northern leader Clare Bailey, Neasa Hourigan, her fellow TDs Patrick Costello and Francis Noel Duffy, party chair Hazel Chu, Young Greens chair Gavin Nugent, and dozens of councillors, candidates and party activists called for the deal to be rejected.
They claimed it offers “one of the most fiscally conservative arrangements in a generation”, “sets out an inadequate and vague pathway towards climate action” and that a “better deal is possible” by voting no.
But senior Green Party sources remain confident that it will be passed by the twothirds’ majority needed.
The tension in Fine Gael over the next government’s green agenda became apparent at the Cabinet meeting on Friday when a row broke out over plans to transition Bord Na Mona workers who harvested peat into jobs to restore bogs to their natural habitats as carbon sinks.
Ministers Michael Ring, Charlie Flanagan, Heather Humphreys and Sean Kyne are all said to have raised concerns about the impact of the plan on rural Ireland. Two ministers said Michael Ring warned of “World War III” over the plans.
“The concern was that the policy direction would stop people using small quarries and cutting turf,” said a cabinet source. “It was seen as anti-rural.”
Amid concerns about a return to austerity, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will tell Fine Gael members today that he has secured a commitment to reduce the deficit every year once the economy returns to growth.
In a Facebook Live event he will say there is a multi-billion “tax shield” in the programme for government that will protect incomes, ensure no increases in income tax or USC in the next budget and then start to reduce them when the economy recovers. He will also say the programme has a big focus on home ownership.