The Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, has strongly backed the low tax policies of the coalition, insisting they had paid huge dividends for the economy.
In a speech to senior executives in the pharmaceutical industry last night, he said the low tax approach had been strongly supported by the Irish people on the evidence of the last General Election.
Mr McCreevy said a recent poll had shown that only 9% of those surveyed favoured increasing taxes.
The minister maintained the policies meant that more than 50,000 people, who had not been working last year, now had jobs, and that the taxes they were paying gave him the resources to invest in the public services his ministerial colleagues needed.
