Ahern Calls Irish General Election

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

26 April 2002

In a sparsely-attended Dail session on Wednesday night, Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern announced that he would be seeking a dissolution of parliament, and officially announced May 17 as the general election date for the Republic of Ireland.

According to reports, the Taioseach visited President Mary McAleese early yesterday morning to ask her to dissolve the Dail.

Fianna Fail have been the majority party in a coalition with the Progressive Democrats for a peacetime record of five years, and oversaw both the Good Friday agreement and Ireland's economic boom, which some pollsters see as putting them ahead in the election campaign.

However many opposition politicians have condemned FF as 'ethically challenged', referring both to the fact that 6 of the party's 77 members have been implicated in tax evasion and other scandals which took place in the 1980s, and to the widening gap between rich and poor in Ireland, which the government has been accused of increasing.

The Irish government also faced criticism earlier this week both from its own think-tank, the Economic and Social Research Institute, and from the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (IBEC). The two organisations condemned current spending levels as a 'recipe for disaster', but failed to agree on a solution, with the ESRI recommending tax increases, and the IBEC warning against them.

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