Sinn Féin's €16bn 'piggy bank' heist on Irish people - Fine Gael

Sinn Féin has today confirmed the biggest heist ever on the island of Ireland with the raiding of carefully saved funds and throwing caution to the wind.

Minister Paschal Donohoe said Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty will splurge the hard work of every worker and taxpayer in this country after their efforts put this country in an unenviable position – which the leader of Sinn Féin even admitted last night on a General Election debate.

“Since the bailout and Ireland’s bankruptcy, Fine Gael has carefully built up funds for the future that now total €16bn euro. This is your money. This is despite numerous international pressures such as a war in Europe and a global inflation saga after coming through a crippling pandemic.

“Those funds will reach over €40 billion by the end of the decade and are part of Fine Gael’s core belief that our children should never face the type of austerity years that we did.

“Sinn Féin’s manifesto is the biggest heist on this country with the raiding of those funds and abandoning all caution. In blunt terms, they are robbing the country’s piggy bank.

“This is on top of raising your taxes, plundering your inheritance and refusing to talk to the next US President amid the prospect of a transatlantic trade war. Today, they are promising an expansion of a €7bn retrofitting programme funded by a carbon tax that they want to abolish.

“We already know Sinn Fein wants to sell you a house but not the land it’s on. Today they have confirmed, they want to undermine the very foundations of our economic success. They can’t even manage their own party finances as seen by numerous media reports let alone carefully manage our country’s finances.

“This cannot go unchecked, and I challenge Pearse Doherty to put this choice to the Irish people by debating me on our economic choices.

“Sinn Fein today confirms there is a choice in this election, securing you future with Fine Gael, or chaos and bankruptcy with Sinn Fein,” Minister Donohoe said.

Some of the issues and questions already identified by Fine Gael include:

Why is the Sinn Fein manifesto so anti enterprise?

The manifesto proposes: unsustainable increases to the minimum wage, proposals to attract Foreign Direct Investment which are already happening, the elimination of incentives to attract overseas talent and penal taxes on higher skilled and experienced employees who are paid higher wages. All this with no new employment targets. Irish enterprise is the breadwinner of the economy.  The Sinn Fein proposals will only leave them crumbs.

Why would anyone want to buy a home under the Sinn Fein proposals?

Sinn Fein will undermine all the existing strategies which encourage home ownership like Help to Buy. Their strategy for retaining ownership of the land under the house is 19th century landlord thinking.  No sane financial institution will offer finance on this kind of property title.

How long will it take before the economy collapses from their economic proposals?

Sinn Fein is offering yesterday’s remedies to today’s challenges. Reducing excise on petrol and diesel is 1970s thinking. It is foolish in the face of a climate crisis to stall carbon taxes. Combined this would cost €814m. Their expenditure forecasts are justified on five-year-old economic measures “current expenditure will be comparable to the public spending as a share of the real economy prior to 2020”. They will narrow the tax base with their USC policy to eliminate it on wages below €45,000, while increasing the burden on higher wage earners by reducing their tax credits and introducing a further 3% solidarity levy on top of restricting pensions tax relief. How do they propose to stop people with get up and go from getting up and going? They want to abolish local property tax but introduce wealth tax. Their figures don’t add up for five years. You cannot narrow the tax base to this extent without tax receipts falling away. They propose spending the Apple money as follows: €1bn – Community Investment Fund €2bn – Health €2.5bn- Renewables €7.6bn- public housing €1bn – building redress

All these essentially (except for renewables) are current expenditure measures, so once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Why did Sinn Fein wait till now to publish their manifesto?

It’s clear now why the Sinn Fein manifesto was only published today – they needed to cut and paste from every other party. Sinn Fein are stealing all of the other parties’ ideas, (PRSI rebates, VAT reductions for hospitality, eliminating student fees, investment in ports) and will steal your money to pay for them.