Dr. Seán Healy:

I have very serious reservations about the approach used by the Commission and the rest of the troika. Different approaches would have produced the same outcome but would have protected many of the jobs that existed at the time. There was no necessity to be so harsh with the bailout agreement, which led to the loss of the level of employment which Ireland had at the time. I still believe there is plenty of evidence to show that what happened was not something that had been worked out on the basis of what was the best approach to try to rectify what had gone wrong in the crash and what had caused it in the first place. Moreover, it did not consider the social impact of what it was doing. It was never part of the discussion.

Social Justice Ireland met representatives of the troika on 12 occasions during the bailout period, when they came every quarter and we constantly raised this issue. We wanted some comment about the need to protect vulnerable people put into the memorandum of understanding. Had it been included in the memorandum of understanding, the impact would then have had to be measured but the troika constantly refused to put it in. The result of this was that it did not go into the memorandum of understanding and it was never measured as part of the process. As a result many things happened. Many people were damaged. Many vulnerable people suffered totally in excess of what was required to actually rectify the situation. At the core of that is the bullying of smaller countries by bigger countries in the context of the EU. The bullying was being done by large continental countries whose bankers and financial institutions had gambled in putting their money on a bet in Ireland. They lost the bet but then insisted they would get 100% of their money back and bullied their way to that position. It is like a person betting on a horse in Paddy Power. The horse comes in last and the person subsequently demands their money back with a gun. It is obviously crazy, yet that is what was happening in this case.

I acknowledge fully that many good things were done to rescue the financial situation in Ireland and save the banks but we were the only country in history to have paid 100% for bank crashes. We had to pay for everything. The whole thing was transferred onto the taxpayer and to the Irish citizen. I note every citizen in Ireland pays tax in one form or another. People may not be paying income tax if their income is very low but they certainly will be paying VAT on many other things. The bottom line is that the approach used was not fair to the smaller and less powerful countries and damaged the vulnerable dramatically more than what was required in the context and to achieve the outcome.