Nash appointed to finance
Louth & East Meath Labour TD Ged Nash has been appointed to the high profile position of Party Spokesperson on Finance and Public Expenditure & Reform.
The role will see Deputy Nash shadow Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath, the new Public Expenditure Minister, in the Dáil.
‘I’m very pleased to have been asked to take on this important role and I can assure the new coalition government that I will provide robust but constructive opposition to government as we all work to get people back to work, support businesses and reshape our economy,’ he said upon his appointment. ‘ The decisions the government will take in the next few weeks and months in terms of the July stimulus package, October budget and the proposed National Recovery Plan will dictate how successful or otherwise our recovery will be’.
He added that his message to the government couldn’t be clearer.
‘We need to dispense with traditional FG and FF conservative fiscal orthodoxy and do everything it takes to rescue jobs and reboot businesses and use the cheap, long term finance currently available to Ireland to invest in housing, public healthcare and other important elements of social infrastructure.’ said the Labour TD.‘Now is not a time to cut back. It’s a time to invest, and in the coming weeks the Labour team headed by myself will propose a series of ways in which our recovery can be a social democratic, inclusive, green and sustainable one.’
He has been a public representative since he began as a local councillor in 1999.
He served as Mayor of Drogheda in 2004, before being elected as a Labour Party TD for the Louth constituency at the 2011 general election. In 2014, he was appointed as Minister of State for Business and Employment was also made a Super Junior Minister, which meant he attended cabinet meetings but didn’t have a vote. He lost his seat at the 2016 general election, but was subsequently elected to Senand Eireann and served on the Labour Party front bench. He was re-elected to the Dáil in 2020.