A vote for FG is a vote to keep taxes down – Coveney

Wednesday, 09 February 2011

Today Cork TD Simon Coveney has said that Fine Gael is absolutely committed to keeping taxes low and have ruled out any further increase in income tax or taxes that affect employment and job creation.

‘Fine Gael is the only party that is credible when we say that we will not further increase income tax. This is because we are the only party with a serious plan to reform and restructure the public sector and in doing so make the savings necessary to avoid tax increases.’

‘It makes no sense to continue to raise taxes when it is clearly possible to cut wasteful expenditure and get better value for money in a public sector which is costing more that €20billion a year to run.’

‘While Fine Gael will make savings let me reassure public sector workers that we will protect the jobs and pay of frontline workers; that means teachers, guards, nurses, SMA’s and many others.’

‘Where we will make our savings will be in reducing the number of people involved in middle management, administration and bureaucracy in the public sector. We will achieve these savings through voluntary redundancies and non replacement of certain posts as people retire. Despite what our political opponents say Fine Gael will not be seeking redundancies.’

‘We will reduce the size of the public sector by 10% in 4 years, and at the end of the period the public sector will be a better place to work and will achieve better outcomes for reduced expenditure.’

‘Ireland will only solve its problems by doing things differently and reforming the structures of delivery, not by continuing to raise taxes to support and oversized expensive system’ concluded Coveney