Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The utterly shocking revelations arising from the Anglo tapes obviously provided a critically important context to last week's EU Council meeting. Much of the discourse and media debate around those revelations has focused on the reputational damage to Ireland. We need to move away from the idea that such damage has been done. President Higgins was correct in stating that the outrageous comments made, disgraceful sentiments expressed and language used by senior executives in the former Anglo Irish Bank had nothing to do with the character of the Irish people or with their attitude towards the people of Germany or the remainder of Europe. This matter is not about what Irish people did, rather it relates to what bankers did and to the tremendous cost they have inflicted on ordinary citizens, on the country and on its economy. It also relates to what bankers right across Europe did to its economy and the price we are paying for their attitude, activities and gangster-like behaviour. There is no other way to describe what happened.

It is telling that they sought to use a poor imitation of the gangster language of the streets in order to stylise their activities. The language used on the Anglo tapes brought to mind the RTE documentary on Bertie Ahern's rise to power from his base in Drumcondra, wherein some of his cronies stated, without shame, that they had modelled themselves on the Mafia. It seems that there was a cohort of people in the spheres of banking and politics - particularly concentrated within the Fianna Fáil Party - the members of which quite unashamedly sought to emulate gangsterism when conducting the business of society and running the economy. If that is true - I think I would probably have the agreement of the current Government when I say that it is true - and if gangsterism among bankers, politicians and developers and a contemptuous attitude with regard to the impact of their activities on ordinary citizens were the problem, then surely the biggest lesson we can draw from this is that we can be absolutely certain and confident in saying that we have no moral, economic, practical or other responsibility to pick up the tab for what these people did.

It begs the question after these shocking revelations - I know this is the feeling among ordinary people - why the hell are we paying the debts of this gang? There is no other word to describe them other than as a "gang" who had utter contempt for the people of this country, its economy and the wider European economy. That is the lesson we should draw from this and it should give us renewed confidence to say we are not paying off these debts because they will destroy us. Why are we taking responsibility for them? Why are we allowing Europe to force us to bear the cost of what these people did, in particular when Europe went along with the doctrine of light regulation, which was certainly championed in this country by this layer of people, or this golden circle, and cheered on the Irish economic model then called the "Celtic tiger"? It rewarded some of the key figures who were championing this cowboy model of banking and economics and promoted some of them into senior positions in the European Union and, to a large extent, institutionalised their laissez-faireno regulation model when it came to running an economy and running banking.

Where I believe our reputation has been damaged - this is an issue the Government must address - is in regard to corporate taxation which is the other big issue that has come up in the past few weeks. I appeal to the Government, if it is serious about wanting to secure, improve and rehabilitate Ireland's reputation at an international level, to show a willingness to seriously scrutinise what multinationals based and operating in this country are doing to avoid paying their proper tax obligations because it is a scandal which is damaging our reputation in Europe, Britain, the United States and everywhere, and we are in denial about it.

In a discussion about setting up a sub-committee to look at global taxation architecture at the finance committee last week, it was very clear that Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party would scupper efforts to get Google, Facebook, Abbott Laboratories or other such companies to answer questions, never mind change the tax regime, on how they are dodging tax. Surely that is doing far more damage to our reputation and to our public finances in that these companies are not contributing properly to the functioning of a state and its infrastructure which they utilise in order to make their enormous profits.

I appeal to the Government to make a statement, given its commitment to supporting whistleblowers, letting Edward Snowden know that if he comes to this country after doing us the service of telling us that the United States is spying on the EU, of which we are part, we will look favourably on his asylum application as it is the least we can do.

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