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Dublin: 14 °C Thursday 20 June, 2013

Majority of public don’t trust coalition on public finances – Red C poll

A poll published in today’s Sunday Business Post shows a clear majority of people do not trust the coalition on the public finances.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore
Image: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

A POLL PUBLISHED today indicates that a majority of the Irish public do not trust the coalition government to manage the public finances.

In a Red C poll for the Sunday Business Post, 62 per cent of respondents said they disagreed with the statement that they trusted the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government to manage the public finances.

Thirty-seven per cent agreed with the statement while 1 per cent said they did not know.

The poll of 1,005 people was carried out over three days last week and comes as the government prepares to deliver its first budget tomorrow and on Tuesday with €3.8 billion of spending cuts and tax rises expected.

The Taoiseach Enda Kenny will go on national television tonight to give a state of the nation address, the first of its kind in 25 years.

The Sunday Business Post also reports that the poll found that two-thirds of those surveyed believe the government should review the Croke Park Agreement on public sector pay and reform.

The government pledged to honour the agreement – which runs until 2014 – in the programme for government.

As reported yesterday, the poll also found that support for the junior coalition partner, Labour, has fallen while support for Fine Gael remains steady. Fianna Fáil made the biggest gains and is now the second most popular party in the country, according to the poll.

Read: Fianna Fáil support jumps as it overtakes Labour in latest Red C poll>

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Comments (28 Comments)

  • Enda has just told me “You are not Responsible for the problem” ,,well hello,,why the f***k am I paying for it.

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  • pagan 04/12/11 #

    We all have to share the pain.Well its easy for our goverment and EVERY ORTHER T.D who is in power or not who live on a TDs wages.I dont understand were this goverment think people are going to get the money to live on.The 100euro house hold tax,I for one wont be paying it EVER.Car tax going up?.I can see a lot of people not being able to afford to tax there cars.This so called carbon tax.People are buying drums of home heating oil on weekends to heat there homes because of “carbon Tax”
    So to all our TDs who will enjoy there nice warm houses and nice christmas dinner and gifts think for a short while about the people of Ireland who cant make ends meet,fighting to keep there homes and can see no hope all because the banks had to be saved.

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  • Glad to see the media are keeping the pressure on! It’s the only way to keep them honest!

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  • The speech was just a load of spiel. Wait until the referendum comes for the treaty changes. There will be doomsday scenarios portrayed to the people and they will believe the tripe that they will be fed. Remember the “yes for jobs” and “yes for recovery”? I pity the fools who voted yes to Lisbon 2, but, I also worry about those fools too. Because when the treaty changes come to referendum, these fools will believe all they are told by the political class and will will cede even more sovereignty to the EU, to unelected bureaurocrats, to those that will make decisions that will affect all our lives. They will be unaccountable to no one. I am truly afraid of this and so should the rest of the Irish people.

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  • Sure its the Germans looking after are finances now. Not Fine Geal and Labour

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  • Trusting the coalition with public finances is like trusting a nympho in a room full of hookers. End result is never pretty.

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  • Duncan 04/12/11 #

    All I have to say is “Managers do things right ……Leaders DO the “right thing”

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  • The anti-German feeling on here is a bit scary.

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    • I agree. And while I like to joke about Angela Merkel and Enda Kenny’s goings on as much as the next person, we need to be working with the Germans not against them. Like it or not, the European Union was initially a Franco-German project, and we were just invited in to share whatever benefits it produced. France and Gemany have built a huge diplomatic apparatus since the end of the world war, and are well accustomed to doing business together. We only recently started to engage properly with our cousins on the continental mainland, since the crisis started in fact. Since we never bothered to build a rapport with other European countries, it’s our own damn fault that we are powerless.

      If I were in Enda Kenny’s position, I’d be meeting up with the Lucas Papadremos, Mario Monti, Pedro Passos Coelho and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Alone our dear leader has a limited bargaining hand, but if he decides to band together with the leaders of all the other distressed countries (all fairly fresh in the job like him), then together they may in fact make a difference.

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    • On that we agree, Fiachra.

      Merkozy (which is a bit of a misnomer, as they disagree on more issues than they agree!) represent between them, more than half of the European economy. The less I say about Sarkozy, taken alone, the better.

      I’d have far more of a beef with the lenders who lent recklessly to feckless Irish institutions, than I would with the Germans, who are very conscious of their history, and almost paranoid about, not only inflation, but appearing to dominate European governance. They have proven themselves more of a friend to Ireland, than the US, in the form of Geithner, who persuaded the troika not to burn the bondholders, only last year.

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  • It is small wonder with extensive leaking and kite flying going on before the budget. The coalition is portraying themselves as a government in complete confusion.

    Looking on the bright side we will soon be asked to hand over control of our finances to the EU and then we’ll get financial management we can trust.

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  • Implementing an austerity budget does not have to mean political suicide.
    http://www.economist.com/node/17627068

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  • This is more of the media asking leading questions. Kinda tired of this, are we not more intelligent than that? The media are constantly running polls and headlines in this style, why don’t that create their own political party and run for office, oh wait, they couldn’t even manage that………
    I’m not fine gael/ labour biggest fan, but who wants to be in their shoes these days? To see fianna fails support on the rise again makes me ashamed to be Irish after what has happened to our country under their watch….

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  • From the picture provided, it seems the teache… I mean Taoiseach and Tániste, need to bash their heads together a little more. You know why… A) To get working better. B) Think about their broken promises. C) To draw blood.

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  • “pssstt Enda, I love you too.” if only this article was the caption competition!

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  • The question is loaded; the survey is void.

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  • ha ha,, they played into hitlers big plan to run the world,, oh i mean germany,, think we will be in safer hands when the germans call in their debt and say we own you and now we will lead you,, we do need leading, our politicians are not politicians at all, they are school teachers, accountants, lawyers, and i cant say any of them are politicians, if so they would have cut their own salaries and pensions as example , and not letting their people starve and freeze and become suicidal and depressive, we have so much in this country and they dont open their eyes to see it, only their wallets to fill them, sad but true, and dont bother calling suicidal hot line that was cut already,,,,

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  • So if not them and not Fianna Fail and not the Greens or the PDs, whom?

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  • It,is easy to blame the “meja”, FF , The Coalition, The Opposition,,,when we point a finger we always have three of them pointing back at ourselves, unless of course one is handicapped. What really caused the problem was not the pointing finger but our hands,,,,we couldnt grab enough with both hands, as individuals, as a society, as a government ,as a country,,, and this grab at all costs permeated right through from the criminal classes to the ruling classes and all classes in between. When the Fan and the shit finally met we limbered our fingers. We voted for the same circus with differant clowns. It hasnt worked. We need to meet them face to face with our anger and our weapons.

    Reply

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