Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Irish people have been very positive in their attitude to Europe for many years. It is good, given that we are an island community, that we had been happy to look beyond our shores, but the Irish people would never have guessed that so many decisions that affect their lives directly would be made by people who do not live here. That is very disconcerting for them in our current situation.

Ever since the referendum on the fiscal compact in 2012, carried by 30% of the electorate under dire threats of harsher budget cuts if the people delivered the wrong answer, we have effectively seen our sovereignty complete its migration to Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin, and for what? A pat on the head or, in the words of one German official, the accolade of being a model bailout student, and what a good student we have been.

The Government has not erred from the terms of the troika's memorandum of understanding, and we are well on our way with its demands to amalgamate schools, the closure of public services like post offices and Garda stations, further erosion of democracy at local government level, chopping our health spending or cutting wages. In the words of Susan Watkins, the editor of the New Left Review, "Elected legislators in the target countries [of the European Financial Stability Facility] are reduced to clerks." Watkins makes a special note in the case of Ireland when she writes that "Irish TDs have so far internalized their subaltern status that a debate on designating June 16, Bloomsday, a public holiday, to celebrate the country's 'great literary tradition', was brought to a halt by a ministerial reminder that the Troika's permission would need to be sought first."

Could the words of Angela Merkel in November 2012 have been any more to the point when she said that there is no such thing any more as domestic policy-making? Instead of national sovereignty, or anything resembling a democracy, we have a collection of neoliberal clerks working on behalf of the markets, committed first and foremost to protecting investors, demanding austerity and deficit reduction, with scant regard for the dangers these policies pose to the economy, society and the environment.

The party Whip system is used to keep everyone sitting on the Government benches firmly in line as it rams through Bill after Bill designed to reinforce our status as a model bailout student. Any Deputy who loses the Whip or disobeys the order of the day is treated with a severity of punishment that would have any aspiring Mafia organisation taking detailed notes.

How can the Government even pretend to be interested in investing local communities with the powers of democratic decision-making regarding their own affairs, a charade the Minister, Deputy Phil Hogan, is currently playing out, when nothing of the sort exists within its own ranks? To paraphrase Nancy Fraser, one of the world's foremost political philosophers, in her analysis of the hollowing out of democracy, with the advent of globalisation, the international discussion that took place from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s over what should count as a just ordering of social relations within society has been distorted, and to a certain extent disregarded, as the goalposts have been moved. The social processes shaping our lives now routinely overflow territorial borders. Nations are faced with a new vulnerability to transnational forces and supranational and international organisations, both governmental and non-governmental. Under this new way of thinking, people the world over find themselves struggling against despotic local and national authorities, transnational corporate greed and global neoliberalism, and the new governance structures of the global economy have vastly strengthened the ability of large corporations and investors to escape the regulatory and taxation powers of territorial states.

This is a sorry state of affairs and one in which the Government is complicit. It either lacks the capacity to think clearly about the implications of this movement or it does not have either the will or the integrity to do anything to counteract it. In short, we desperately need to restore sovereignty and democracy to this country, and the Tánaiste's Government manifestly has no intention of doing so.

The market is corroding our communities, our infrastructure and our environment, and the members of this Government are its humble servants. Only yesterday John Major, a former Conservative Minister, called on large excess profits of companies to be taxed in a windfall tax to help the millions of people in Britain who have to face a choice between eating or heating their homes this winter. The Government might consider the same for our people caught facing the same challenges.

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