Norma Foley claims Sinn Féin has 'no policies'

Minister for Education Norma Foley used her Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis speech to take aim at Sinn Féin, calling the opposition party "negative, spineless and baseless".

She claimed Sinn Féin "has no policies" and had "built a database to snoop on every Irish adult".

Speaking at the RDS before Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Ms Foley said: "Their entire strategy is based on trying to denigrate this country, and claiming that unless everything is done, nothing is done. They are wrong to do that. Nothing could be further from the truth. I despise that negative, spineless, and baseless opposition.

"It is now patently obvious opposition don’t have any policies, they have soundbites. And you can’t run a country on soundbites."

She also accused Sinn Féin of being anti-business, the Irish Examiner reports.

"Our country has always been fueled by business, enterprise and entrepreneurship, but the only mention of this sector from the opposition is how they can tax and traduce them.

"We in Fianna Fáil are determined to build, sustain, grow and nurture business and enterprise, they’re talking about milking them for short-term gain. A recipe for economic disaster."

She claimed Sinn Féin's Abú database was being used to "snoop" on people.

"And remember delegates, when it was revealed that Sinn Féin in their sinister big brother moment was developing a mass database to snoop on all Irish adults," she said.

"This database was housed overseas so it couldn’t be investigated? First they said nothing. Then they denied it. Then they admitted it but said that some innocent party supporter was in charge of the database, but because he happened to live in Serbia they couldn’t give any more details. How curious!"