FINE GAEL CHIEF whip Regina Doherty tore into Micheál Martin this morning over the airwaves, accusing him of attacking her party at every opportunity instead of presenting his own policies.

The TD was speaking after an address by the Fianna Fail leader in which he claimed his party “succeeded in stopping many of the most damaging Fine Gael policies”.

“Their increasingly right-wing agenda and focus on tax cuts weighted to help the wealthiest most has been blocked. Some of the worst damage which their policies caused in the last five years have begun to be unwound.” he said in a speech yesterday afternoon.

Even the Fine Gael Minister for Social Protection has acknowledged that they have departed from years of socially unjust and unfair budgets.

“He points out that he thinks Fine Gael are more interested in tax cuts than Fianna Fáil would be, yet in the manifesto Fianna Fáil wanted to cut 2.9 billion worth of tax cuts and we only proposed over the next number of years to cut 2.4. Now does that make them more right-wing than we are?” Doherty asked when questioned about his remarks on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today.

I’m not going to go back in and play the game he wants us to play and criticise them because they criticised us, but it doesn’t go unnoticed that at every opportunity – and particularly yesterday – he has a pop at Fine Gael, he has a pop at Cabinet, he has a pop at a particular individual in Fine Gael he obviously fears, he has a pop at the English government.

“Micheál needs to sit back now and stop with his spin and start coming up with real policies so that he can show people how Fianna Fáil would govern any differently to when they wrecked the country,” she added.