Sinn Féin spokesperson on Finance, Pearse Doherty, has called on Pascal Donohue to retract his press statement on Sinn Féin’s manifesto that contains clearly false statements.
Pearse Doherty said:
“A recent statement by Paschal Donohue makes completely false accusations about Sinn Féin and our manifesto launch. The fact that he is completely and utterly wrong can be easily verified by even the most basic fact-checking. It should be immediately retracted.
“Paschal Donohue states that Sinn Féin would refuse to speak to the next US president. This is despite the leader of Sinn Féin saying the exact opposite in front of a packed press conference today.
“He goes on to claim that Sinn Féin will spend €16bn that is currently stored in funds. That is also untrue. Our manifesto makes it clear that not only will this money not be touched but we will increase the funds by a further €15bn. This will bring the funds to a total of €31bn.
“He claims our retrofit programme is not funded because we will call off the five increases to petrol, diesel and home heating oil that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil plan to go ahead with if returned to government. This will heap more costs on workers and families. We lay out in black and white the full cost of this measure in our manifesto.
“Paschal Donohue has the audacity to accuse Sinn Féin of stealing policy ideas. He mentions the abolition of student fees. Sinn Féin has called for third level fees to be abolished in every one of the last 14 years that Fine Gael have been in power. Every year that they have chosen not to abolish fees.
“He raised our policy of a PRSI rebate to help businesses adjust to the increases in the minimum wage. Fine Gael opposed this only last month when Sinn Féin put this forward as part of the Finance Bill.
“Paschal has asked for a debate. This is after he did not show up to the debate on Virgin Media last week between Finance spokespeople.
“I welcome the chance to debate him. He needs to explain why Fine Gael are giving more money to landlords than renters. He needs to explain why he is standing over sweetheart deals for vulture funds that are snapping up homes from under the nose of first time buyers.
“And, he needs to explain why as Minister for Public Expenditure he has failed to make the necessary investment in housing and has left people worse off than when his government came to power.”
