COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER PAT Rabbitte has said that Ireland deserves recognition from the European Central Bank (ECB) and other Troika partners for the “hit” it took in order to prevent a European banking crisis.
Rabbitte was reacting to the latest Ipsos MRBI poll in today’s Irish Times which indicates that support for the government has fallen sharply in recent months.
He said that he hoped that current discussions with the Troika would yield progress on the terms of Ireland’s bailout.
“The ECB in particular has not yet come out in public to acknowledge that Ireland took a hit in order to prevent the contagion in the European banking system and that we deserve some recognition for that,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
“I hope that the discussions that are concluding today in the latest engagement with the Troika will see some further progress to add to the changes that we’ve made already,” without expanding further on just what sort of progress can be expected from discussions.
The Labour TD said that he was disappointed “but not surprised” by the results in today’s poll which showed support for the Labour party down six percentage points to 12 per cent, behind Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, and Fianna Fáil.
Rabbitte claimed that “this is a very unpopular time for politics” blaming the previous Fianna Fáil-led administration for that but he acknowledged that historically the smaller parties in coalition governments suffered more in the polls.
“People are very distressed about it and people are very angry about it but the fact of the matter remains that we’ve been given a job to do,” he said.
“This country… it’s economy was in crisis and the challenge is to put the economy back on the road to recovery and that’s what we’re committed, unifiedly (sic), as a government to do because there is no alternative.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say