By Elaine Loughlin, political reporter

Fianna Fáil’s Eamon Ó Cuív has hit out at Labour for claiming his party crashed the economy.

Mr Ó Cuív claimed that while in opposition Fine Gael and Labour did not ask the Fianna Fáil-led government to reduce spending but instead encouraged them to spend more.

At their conference over the weekend Labour repeatedly pointed out that Fianna Fáil had crashed the economy.

Reacting this morning Mr Ó Cuiv said: "During our time in government during no Private Members Time did either Fine Gael or Labour stand up and say we are spending too much, in fact they demanded more.

“Not one Private Members Bill was saying ‘would you slow it down lads and stop spending that money on social welfare, that money on education, that money on health."

Likewise he said that while in opposition Fine Gael and Labour had not spoken out against reducing taxes.

“All we ever got to be quite honest was, ‘there is €3bn in surplus would your for God’s sake spend it?’."

Mr Ó Cuív was speaking at the launch of the party’s manifesto for rural Ireland which promises to create 30,000 jobs in rural Ireland and provide universal fibre broadband and mobile phone coverage.

He said he “sincerely regrets” any part he played in the downturn but said that Labour would have inflicted more pain if they had been in power at the time of the crash.

“If they had been in government and they had followed their own policies they would have spent even more money on health, education and social welfare, which were the main spending areas we got involved in,” he said.

His party colleague Bobbly Aylward admitted that mistakes were made during the Celtic Tiger but said it wasn’t all down to Fianna Fáil.

“As the Banking Inquiry as pointed out there was a lot of different elements as to why it happened,” he said.