Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)

Will the senior bondholders of Anglo Irish Bank bear their burden?

Regarding the substantive issue, the most recent bailout has put an enormous burden on this State. The reckless bucketing of €24 billion of Irish people's money by this Government into the banking system will bring this State closer to unsustainability. In other words, this has the capacity to break the State. It will deepen austerity measures that are crippling thousands of people, the weakest and the most vulnerable in society. It will also have the effect of deepening the procyclical recession that is currently affecting the State. In the end it may cost every individual worker €13,000.

This bailout is probably the most severe and important policy that has been implemented in this State since Partition. It is of such importance to the people that they should have their say by way of referendum. In the coming days we shall debate some of these issues further and tease out the economic effects and the effects of the actual bailout on the people. However, there is another major inherent cost to the deal, namely, the price of Irish sovereignty. Sovereignty is about having supreme independent authority over the country. In the Republic, this sovereignty lies with the people. In practical terms this means having the right to determine fully the laws that affect the people.

The goal of self-determination has been central to Sinn Féin since 1905 and my party has continued with that goal to the present date, with the aim of ultimately achieving full Irish independence and sovereignty on the island as a whole. Sovereignty is not a woolly or vague aspiration. It is a bread and butter issue, affecting the material wealth of each individual. The referendum is the ultimate tool of sovereignty. In this situation it is the people who have a say over the future of the State.

Over the years, this hard-won sovereignty has been diluted by a number of EU referenda such as that on the Lisbon treaty. The passing of such treaties was surrounded by substantial debate and, in some cases, major controversies. In some cases there were re-runs of referenda. In contrast, in this situation we are on the cusp of a silent revolution, one which sees extensive transfer of macro-economic sovereignty and decision-making to Brussels. The debt mountain created by Fianna Fáil has not only strangled this economy but is leading to a substantial relocation of power from the Irish people to unelected bureaucrats in Europe. It is a debt for sovereignty swap.

Much of the loss of sovereignty has been obscured from the current debate because of the more immediate and pressing issues of the massive debt burden accumulating at present. However, the outworkings of this debt for sovereignty swap will cause major difficulties in the future. In the future, this State will have to go cap in hand to the EU and ask for permission. The EU may or may not allow us permission to pursue certain economic activities. The EU may say, to quote the Minister for Finance, that we can bring in the policy if we introduce a counter-balancing measure. Some people will say it does not matter if we hand over the economy because the EU cannot make as much of a mess of it as Fianna Fáil did. I can see it is hard to imagine anyone making a mess bigger than that made by Fianna Fáil but it is important to understand the dynamics of EU decision making. It makes decisions for the benefit of the greater European economy. Ireland only represents 1% of that economy and does not register regarding decisions that are made. In the past 20 years, Ireland has been on a completely different economic cycle from the core European states. This means monetary policy which would have a beneficial impact on Germany could have a devastating impact on Ireland. In this State, low interest rates were partly responsible for the largest boom and bust cycle the world has ever seen.

Our reticence regarding the ceding of sovereignty to Brussels is not based on an idealistic pipe-dream, it is based on bread and butter side effects that such a sovereignty swap would have. It is worth noting that the so-called reform energy emanating from the EU that is driving this approach on decision-making capacity is not ideologically neutral, much of it comes from deep seated EU federal aspirations.

I appeal to TDs, especially those in Fine Gael and the Labour Party who went from door to door not 40 days ago to convince people the new Government would fairly share the burden of debt with senior bondholders, now they have been elected, to stand up for the people and economic sovereignty and survival of the State.

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