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Dublin: 12 °C Wednesday 19 June, 2013

FLASHBACK: Eamon Gilmore says Labour won’t cut child benefit

The general election campaign seems like a long time ago now…



(YouTube/)

IT’S AN OLDIE – but not necessarily a goodie.

Political history is littered with examples where parties have gone into government on the basis of ambitious and enthusiastic pre-election promises, only to find that the reality of an uneasy marriage with a coalition partner is far more challenging than anticipated.

On February 19, 2011 – with only six days to go until the general election – Eamon Gilmore insisted Labour would not agree to any cuts in child benefit if it was to enter coalition with Fine Gael.

Today, the Minister for Social Protection – Labour’s deputy leader Joan Burton - confirmed cuts in the rates of child benefit – from €140 to €130 per month for the first and second children, and from €148 to €130 for the third child.

LIVE: Budget 2013 as it happens

Budget 2013: Here’s what will affect the children

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Comments (69 Comments)

  • JayTee 05/12/12 #

    Labour just handed Sinn Fein half their vote!!

    Reply
  • He also said Labours way or Frankfuts way look how that turned out.

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  • I went looking for this a while ago. Remember it clearly. Just as I remember Labours Alex White standing in my garden looking for vote. He looked into my car and on seeing children’s carseats urged me to vote for him to ensure child benefit would not be cut. Labour deserve to go to the way of the Greens at the next election.

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  • Good man Eamon. You’re a man of your wor… Oh wait a minute!!! Well if we can’t believe the word of a politician who can we trust? Shame on you Gilmore. Shame.

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  • The amount of false promises and back tracking on election pledges could we not terminate their employment on a breech of contract basis.

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  • The Labour leaderships number one priority at the moment is securing their pensions!
    nothing else matters, they know that the party is f**ked come the next election! BUT they don’t care!
    Gimmemore can see the golden lotto pension on the horizon! f**k the poor??

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  • Gilmore is a lying worm. Enjoy your reign Gilmore…you’re the Labour leader that consigned your useless, worthless party to history. Your name and tenure will be etched into this country’s history.

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  • Put simply — they must get money from somewhere to pay Gilmore’s wife in her new job! Specially created for her by Rory Quinn as there was nobody else interviewed. There was not 1 other qualified person capable of doing this special job in the whole of Ireland. If this is not dictatorship what is?? Not one person in opposition objected or raised this in the Dail. Seems like trading favours is top of the agenda.

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  • Im cannot wait cannot wait til a labour t.d. comes to my door looking for a vote…

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  • we the people should have the power to remove politicians that go. back on. there word . we put them in power based on. what thy say and promise . if. any body went for a job and lied at the interview . thy would not last long so why should politicians be any different

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    • We do not have that power because FG removed articles 47 & 48 from the 1937 constitution. DDI want to put them back in. That’s all.

      Imagine a political party that wants to give you the right to f@ck them out of power if u give it to them

      Mad!

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    • has to be the most important change going forward. it would do away with the gombeen parish pump element that is the cancer in our society, i voted last year for what was put in front of me by the parties and there is no accountability for the complete uturn. i have now a government that i are doing the opposite to what i gave them a mandate to do.

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    • Is there anything we, the employers of these greedy gits can do to put this back in the Constitution. Surely it is our Constitution. We need to stop these lying ba….ds getting their hands on a pension. They HAVE to be stopped. NOW. Get a petition going to make them re-instate it, then sack the lot of them and halve the salaries of whoever is elected to take care of our Country. No expenses, work 48 weeks a year, same as anyone lucky enough to have a job, put Bertie Ahearn in prison where he belongs, CAB take all his fiddled assets, same for Michael Lowery, Mick Wallace etc. And any politician elected to the Dail should be forbidden from local issues. If you are in Leinster House, then you should only be involved in National Policy. And as for Reilly, his assets should be confiscated to pay his bank debt that we are now paying. He should be sacked over the Primary Care issue, and when sacked, no pension, perks etc. Oh yes, forgot about the “family business” that the Dail has become, they all get the sack too. I could go on forever about how angry I am. Pre last election I let rip at the FG candidate who came looking for my vote. He and his helper stood on my doorstep and I let rip. why can’t we stop paying our taxes – we really have to do something to stop them.

      Reply
  • Gilmore has gone full swing in his core political beliefs, he is just the same as FF /FG . A spoofing spin meister , bye bye Gilmore in the next election we wont forget.

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  • “Every Little Hurts”, eh Eamon? Just clinging on til February when all your pension entitlements kick in?

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  • Is there no way, as their employeers, to force them out of government. And if not, can we just drag the f##hers out and change the locks.

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  • They’ll say anything to get elected. Why are we surprised ?? Liars the lot of them. None of them can be trusted.

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  • Labour are finished. Unfortunately who do we vote for. For years I condemned people who said that they are all the same. I was wrong. They ARE all the same.

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  • The troika forced him to do it, blah, blah, blah….

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  • Not agreeing with it is one thing, being told to shut up and accept it is another. Then again they may be just liars and said anything to look good before the election ( More than likely ). Its not as if child benefit cuts are going to affect Gilmore and his wife’s new tasty salaries and pensions.

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  • Eamon Gilmore has just released a statement on why he stood by child cuts, Angela has just rang me to say if you bend over like Enda, you will be in line for a trophy at the next party for arse lickers, good man Eamon you blue shirt Bas—-ed.

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  • I voted labour at the last election to stop FG getting a majority. What a fool I was. I won’t make the same mistake again!

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  • In this day and age you’d imagine there’d be something contained in the constitution that allows us to turf the likes of him out on his ear when he turns out to be a lying c##t

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  • Bruce 05/12/12 #

    Are you really surprised?

    He claimed to be a socialist too!

    “L” for “Labour”; “L” for “Liars”

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  • The labour party, or I can’t belief its not Fine Geal. Maybe labour could hand out it’s manifestos for people to burn to heat their houses, that’s about all its good for.

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  • People say DDI have not said what they will do in govt and they should say more than just they will give people the power to throw out sitting governments. Why bother? It’s all lies anyway. The ability to f@ck them out is enough for me

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    • what would D D. do about the crazy pay. and perks that . TD s enjoy now . would you cut. them . bring them down to the same level as us mortals . . and put an end to jobs for wife son nephew and the family cat

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    • Personally I would cut Enda by another 50k and set up a pension system for them that doesn’t involve us paying the equivalent of 30k a month towards that pension. But it’s not up to me.

      It’s not up to DDI either.

      DDI will implement the policies their members come up with. Not their own. There to serve and all that.

      Here’s how it has worked in Switzerland for the past 200 years. It’s not a new concept

      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

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    • DDI cannot say what they will do. That’s the point.

      It’s up to the electorate to decide what they want done. If you’re not happy; kick em out.

      Do you want a government that serves the interests of the banks and ECB? vote for the established parties.

      The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun  reject all systems, and try of liberty ”

      
      Frdric Bastiat

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    • Precisely Sean

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  • What’s new there, empty promises from goverment party’s.

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  • This spoofing, spinning & backtracking is becoming so tiresome at this stage. FG/Lab will do well to realise people in this country have a breaking point, and after this budget, they also have long memories.
    The poor and vulnerable in society are always an easy target, Labour have dug their own grave.

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  • I left home 7yrs ago at age 23,I had chances to vote but sadly I never did & this was when “times wer good”!! Reason,I said there all complete full of shit there was not one honest politician to vote for,this even cements it even more!!they promise it all,bottom line they couldn’t give 2 wanks about the people only there “fat pay-cheque”

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  • Liar liar, pants on fire.

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  • Cudn’t believe a word that politicans say- sick of the lot of them!

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  • Idiot Ireland!

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  • Spineless windbag …

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  • Gilmore is a politician = lies. Why the surprise they all do it. It’s all about getting power and nothing else.

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  • His wife gets over €600 grand for land bought by the eamon.gilmore@oir.iestate , and she gets a job with another labour minster dept because she was doing such a great job in her old job that they scraped it and his daughter gets a gig with the AG’s office , so there’s around half a million going to the Gilmore family every year the words I’m alright jack come to mind and F@@k the rest of you.

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  • We need to move towards socialism.

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  • For my family, the biggest child benefit cut of all came years ago when it could no longer be claimed for those over the age of 18 for those in full time education. Overall I am certainly not happy as today my wife, a part time teacher in a PLC, found out about the cuts in that sector which may well result in her losing her job next September due to a change in the pupil teacher ratio. I was once a Labour member and so I know there are many decent people in the party. I was very much against coalition in my younger days and remember the arguments about it during annual conference back in the eighties, Yes I’m annoyed that a promise on child benefit could be ignored – it should have been taxed instead of cutting it – but what continues to puzzle me is that Labour is the party getting hammered by the comments as if Fine Gael had no part to play. It has always been the case that the bigger party gets the credit for the good things and the smaller party gets the blame for what goes wrong. Of course Joan Burton is the politician (and Labour the party) associated with this cut but do you all really think that Fine Gael had no part in this? Yes I’m totally peed off but please don’t think FF, SF or anyone else could balance the books without hurting everyone. Things like politicians’ pensions are great for a sound bite but, in the overall scheme of things, that, and similar expenditure worthy of deep cuts are just a drop in the ocean compared to what we owe. Stephen Donnelly is the one TD I admired for his pre-budget comments. He wants to play hardball about the debt but is honest enough to say that everything is on the table when it comes to the budget.

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    • Sorry paddy but the man lied, whatever FF and SF would do doesn’t matter. He asked the people of Ireland to elect him and his party and with the promises he made some of us did, he is a liar. His party are power hungary and don’t
      have any morals enough backbone to stand up to FG and are just lining their pockets

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  • If you are in a union you can at least get some of your own back on the liars in the Labour party. Ask your shop steward to get forms from the union which state you want none of your union dues to go to the Labour Party. If everyone was to do this it would hit them where it hurts, in their pocket.

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  • ha, you all seem so puzzled about what’s been done in the budget etc.what a pity there is not going to be a mini budget later in the year to do more of the same.Then, Maybe, you might all get up off your asses and do something constructive and continious about it.I have never seen the Irish people as fearfull as they seem to be at present and the reason is , they are still waiting for someone else to do the donkey work , marching,organising etc,.During the tax marches of the 80′s the same few continued on the fight when the Unions were scared sh..less when they saw so many people on the streets.The unemployed need to get their act together or Most of them will Never work again , and what Pat and Eamon call the poorer classes will be beaten into further submission and kept in a State of Depression and a feeling of worthlessness.
    You are better than this , For your own sake Just make a stand.

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  • john fox 06/12/12 #

    Gilmore mantra . . . sticks and stones will break my bones but your money. will hurt me . and my wife loves her new job . she can’t. understand why or how she got it
    but gee thanks lads

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  • Politicans in breaking pre-election promise shocker. Did anyone really think this lot would any better than the previous bunch ? If any of them could run a company let alone a country they wouldn’t be in the Dail.

    Reply

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