Michael Fitzmaurice has blasted reports in national newspapers over the weekend which alleged that Independent TD’s in negotiations with the political parties had a list of demands which would cost the exchequer €13 Billion, labelling them as “a complete fabrication and lazy journalism.”
“I don’t know whether it is an attempt by the media or whoever to bring the Labour Party back into talks, but the assertion that the Independent Alliance or any other Independents have a massive shopping list of expensive demands is totally untrue. We have conducted hundreds of hours of talks on various issues of interest, a lot of which would have been shared by the bigger political parties. Things like improvements to rural infrastructure, broadband, roads, improved facilities at Knock Airport and a new A & E unit for the University Hospital in Galway, improved mental health services for instance – would be shared by all the parties. There is funding available for a lot of these projects from Europe under the TEN-T Scheme. We pointed out several ways of saving the exchequer money with regard to interest rates on bonds etc. during our discussions as well, which received no publicity.”
“I have no problem whatsoever with Labour entering into talks with Fine Gael or whoever they want to talk to but I want to state categorically today that no huge financial demands were made to any of the parties. The Independent Alliance conducted their negotiations on the basis of the charter which we drew up in advance of the election and which has been in the public domain for a number of months.”
Michael Fitzmaurice concluded by saying “We all know that there are financial constraints on the economy and to negotiate huge spending on a list of demands would have been irresponsible and that is something that I or my colleagues would not and did not engage in.”