Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in the House during this historic debate on the Government decision to exit the EU-IMF programme. Let there be no mistake about it; the day these people came to town was a sad day for Ireland, a sad day for democracy and, above all, a sad day for the Irish people. We must all recognise this because people have suffered so much from all the false promises made in the past.

Today I am relieved and I welcome the exit. It is completely wrong to say that many in the Opposition wanted it to fail for political reasons. I heard a number of Ministers say that in recent days. That is not correct, as everybody on all sides wants our country to succeed, to develop and to take its place among the nations internationally. I reject any type of petty politics in respect of this exit. However, it is equally unfair to let this happen without a closer examination of the terms and conditions and of why we did not go for a backup or insurance policy. Perhaps the Government is correct; I have an open mind on the matter. Having listened to the debate in recent days, I suspect that the Government will have to go for it in the end. Our people need to know the facts. They need to know the conditions and the background, and all Members of the Oireachtas needed to know the full facts and make an informed decision based on accurate information. That is a reasonable demand and I sincerely hope it does not all go wrong after around 12 months because of some disaster in the markets or the issue of bank debt. Too many mistakes have been made in the past, and rushed decisions and late-night votes should not happen again. Due to these bad decisions and the actions of some greedy bankers and greedy developers, we have ended up with the austerity of the last few years.

To make matters worse, many people are still advocating austerity. The preachers and cheerleaders of austerity in the Irish political establishment seem to want more. What planet are they living on? Austerity does not work. That is an economic fact. It reduces growth, it increases unemployment and increases inequality. It hammers all the people on the ground, leading to bad health in their personal lives. Before I talk about the economic aspects of the EU-IMF exit, I think we should look at the serious health implications of the austerity policies over the last number of years. They were severely damaging, and people are hurting. We can see this if we look more closely at the issue of disability. For example, the allocation for St. Michael's House has been reduced by more than €12.3 million over the last number of years. The service currently has 462 people on its residential waiting list. St. Michael's House is doing a great job supporting the families that depend on the service. The organisation is really struggling with reduced financial and staffing resources and with the implementation of Government and HSE policies. That is an example of the direct consequences of what has been going on.

I commend the Ballyhea protest group on its actions on the debt issue, along with my colleagues in the Technical Group, and we will be bringing it up again next week in the Dáil. We will be calling on the Government to lobby the ECB immediately for a one-off exemption in monetary financing to allow the Central Bank of Ireland destroy the €25 billion in sovereign bonds issued in February 2013 in lieu of the remaining promissory notes, plus the €3.06 billion bond being held by the Central Bank of Ireland, and to further lobby the ECB for the cancellation, in their entirety, of all interest payments currently being made on these bonds, promissory notes and related debt. We are going to strengthen the Government's hand to do something about this debt issue. Many people are suffering because of it, and again I would like to commend the people of Ballyhea and the Charleville Says No group, who met the Technical Group recently and made a very strong case on the debt issue. Deep down, I know the Government and the Minister for Finance accept the reality that we need to do something about the long-term issue of the debt. We need to deal with this issue head-on, or else we will have a major job developing growth in the economy and trying to get people back working and paying taxes so that we can pay for services in St. Michael's House and in Prosper Fingal in Swords.

I welcome this debate. I welcome the fact that we are exiting the programme, but the war is not over. This is only round one.

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