Gerry’s ‘car crash’ number-crunch
SF leader left to count the cost of his mistakes on own party tax policies, as rivals scoff at his radio interview
GERRY Adams has been accused of ‘not having a clue about his own party’s tax plans’ after a ‘car crash’ interview on the national airwaves yesterday.
While the Sinn Féin leader has been promoting his party’s policy of a ‘fairer’ tax regime where the wealthy would pay more, he has repeatedly tripped himself up when it comes to the figures.
Yesterday was another prime example, as he repeatedly and wrongly asserted that earnings over €100,000 would only be taxed at 7% under Sinn Féin rule.
Challenged about his poor grasp of economics, Mr Adams clashed with Seán O’Rourke on his RTÉ radio show yesterday morning on numerous occasions.
At one stage, Mr Adams snapped
‘Hadn’t a clue on his own tax plans’
back at Mr O’Rourke, saying, ‘Seán, don’t shout me down,’ to which O’Rourke replied, ‘I won’t shout you down if you don’t waffle.’
The Louth TD at one point was grilled on his party’s claims that households would be €260 better off if Irish Water was abolished.
However, Mr O’Rourke pointed that as the majority of houses have already received the €100 grant, the real net saving would be €160.
‘Can we just start with some basic sums here,’ Mr O’Rourke said, while accusing Mr Adams of misleading people on this issue. The controversial Republican would not directly address O’Rourke’s core point in his reply, instead insisting that: ‘Water should be a human right.’
O’Rourke rebutted: ‘Fine, so you don’t accept my basic arithmetic so, 260, minus 100 equals 160.’
Mr Adams countered again, retorting: ‘No I don’t.’
He was then pressed on another Sinn Féin plan to introduce new taxes for those earning over €100,000. The conversation centred on an example of a person earning in the region of €110,000.
‘On every euro earned over €100,000, seven euros, sorry, seven cent, in a euro,’ Mr Adams said.
He was asked if this meant that the cumulative marginal rate would then be 59%, and he said: ‘I’m conceding the point that an individual earning over €100,000 will pay no more than 7c in the euro for every euro earned – he only starts to get taxed on earnings over €100,000.’
Mr O’Rourke interrupted again: ‘I’m sorry, you seem to be saying that every euro you earn over €100,000 will only be taxed at seven cent, that is not the case.’
‘That is the case Seán, that is the case – that has been the case carefully worked out with us,’ Mr Adams replied.
Mr Adams said that in return for higher taxes top earners would also enjoy the benefits of improved public services. Later that afternoon, Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty clarified the party’s wealth tax policy would see an extra 7% charged on all income over €100,000, which would bring the marginal rate on these earnings to almost 60% as it stands. When asked to comment on Mr Adams’s confusion on the matter, Mr Doherty said that he had not heard the keynote interview on one of Ireland’s most listened-to shows.
Labour’s Ged Nash, junior business minister, seized on the confusion, lambasting the Sinn Féin leader as ‘a man who has to take his shoes off to help him count to 20.’
He added Mr Adams ‘hadn’t a clue about his own tax plans’.
‘Given ample opportunities to clarify his party’s position, Gerry Adams didn’t even recognise the extent of his errors and dismissed any such questioning,’ Mr Nash said. He called the interview ‘car crash’ listening.
Mr Adams, who has also struggled when talking numbers during the election debates, ran into difficulty again yesterday on RTÉ’s Six- One News when he was challenged on his party’s health spending proposals.
The Sinn Féin leader was asked simple questions on their health manifesto, such as how much it would cost for their plan to open 1,600 new beds, or how he would attract the 6,600 extra staff they want to hire, when medical vacancies can’t currently be filled, but he could provide no details. Instead, Mr Adams was only able to give a total figure of €3.3billion for their entire health proposals for ten years.
Presenter Bryan Dobson asked him: ‘€3.3billion across the board, and I’m j ust wondering i n this particular area, in terms of acute hospitals, how much goes into acquiring those extra beds that would free up people on trolleys in A&E?’
Mr Adams did not provide a figure in his answer.
Meanwhile, Pearse Doherty accused Finance Minister Michael Noonan of lying three times over the past three
weeks, with the latest occasion being as recently as yesterday.
Mr Doherty said Mr Noonan has ‘lied in his estimates of how much it would cost to abolish the USC – and was out by half a billion euro.
‘He claims that abolishing USC would cost €3.7billion, he is wrong, he is lying. The cost of abolishing the USC would cost up to €500million more,’ he said.
‘ It’s very clear looking at the Department of Finance’s spreadsheets that that is the case.’
Minister Michael Noonan provided a scathing put- down to Mr Doherty when he was asked about the accusation yesterday.
‘Pearse Doherty is wrong, there is no point in making an assertion without being able to prove it,’ Mr Noonan said. ‘... Pearse’s problem is that he got his maths grinds, or wherever he learned his maths, at the Gerry Adams maths school.’
Meanwhile, Minister Noonan pledged yesterday that there would be ‘no new taxes’ if Fine Gael is returned to government unless there was a cataclysmic world crisis.