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

Last February, the current Minister for Finance rightly stated that it was neither morally right nor economically sustainable for taxpayers to be asked to beggar themselves to make massive profits for speculators. This is the moment in which the Government betrayed the aspirations of the people who voted for it. Precisely that which the Minister said was unsustainable and morally wrong he now intends to do at the behest of the IMF and the EU. He will continue the bailout of bankers and speculators and at the same time beggar ordinary workers, the poor and the vulnerable. We are going to rob the National Pension Reserve Fund of money that could be used for jobs programmes and we are going to sink into an unsustainable morass of debt that will enslave our society for years to come.

We were told these actions, unjust as they may be, would avoid the nationalisation of the banking system and get credit flowing to the economy. It has achieved neither objective, however, and we now own the zombie banks and the economy is starved of credit even though billions of euro are flowing into the coffers of the speculators and bondholders who helped to create this crisis in the first place.

The plan for Irish Life & Permanent just about sums up the affair. We will pay €4.3 billion for the zombie part of that institution while selling off the profitable divisions which made €160 million last year. This is not a bailout; it is collusion between the EU, the IMF, the previous Government and, tragically, the current Government to asset strip the country under cover of the economic crisis. It is a burial rather than a bailout of our economy and society. We have almost gone beyond the point where it is worthwhile to appeal to the Taoiseach to stop the madness but I will make a last appeal to him to stop the bailout of bankers and bondholders and the immiseration of the people.

The people will have to take matters into their own hands. We should do what the people of Iceland did when their Government refused to listen to them and attempted to implement measures such as the Minister has just announced. We need to take to the streets to stop the madness of this bank bailout. I appeal to people who are angry at the thought that further billions of euro will be used to bail out the bankers and bondholders to take to the streets at 6 p.m. next Wednesday to protest outside these Houses when the Technical Group puts down a motion calling for a referendum on the madness of this bank bailout and the IMF deal. People power will be required if we are to stop this insanity.

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