By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's social protection minister, Joan Burton, was elected leader of the Labour Party, the junior partner in government, on Friday with the task of arresting a collapse in support that led to a local election hammering.
Burton, the party's deputy leader, takes over from deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore who resigned in May after Labour were punished by voters for implementing an austerity programme that has put the country's finances back on track.
Burton, who becomes the first woman to lead the centre-left party, has said she will stick to EU-imposed deficit reduction targets but that austerity had reached its limits in Ireland ahead of the coalition's final round of budget cuts in October.
"Now that we have the economy in something of a better place, the critical thing is to move to have as much attention paid by the government to social recovery as has been paid to stabilising the economy," Burton told reporters ahead of the formal declaration.
Burton, a qualified chartered accountant who worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers before entering politics, defeated junior minister Alex White in the contest for leader, winning 78 percent of the votes.
Her predecessor Gilmore had helped lead Ireland out of an international bailout last year and there have been signs of economic recovery, but the benefits are not being felt by many voters, particularly those in Labour's core support base.
Ireland's economy grew by 2.7 percent in the first quarter, data showed on Thursday, and new European Union rules on calculating output significantly increased the size of the economy, raising the chances of Dublin easing its austerity measures later this year.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan of the senior Fine Gael party wants to reduce the planned 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) of tax hikes and spending cuts in October's budget. He has said he will have room to do so if tax figures and economic data are sufficiently positive.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Andrew Roche)
