Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

On April Fool's Day 2011 people in this country woke up to the reality that the new Fine Gael-Labour coalition Government, elected on the basis that it promised real change, had just pledged to pour another €24 billion of our money down the banking black hole.

Many people no doubt had the feeling they were taken for fools when they voted for Fine Gael and Labour in the belief that things were indeed going to be different. They believed the blanket bank guarantee was going to be set aside. They believed senior bondholders were going to be made to share the burden. Many believed it was going to be Labour's way not Frankfurt's way. Some may even have believed that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, the bruiser from Limerick, was going to stand up for the people's interest and fight Ireland's corner with conviction and determination at EU level.

The promises of our winter of discontent have now melted like snow on a ditch. The parties that roared like lions during the general election campaign are now bleating like sheep. However, this is hardly surprising. For years the leaderships of Fine Gael and Labour have been the most submissive voices in this country when it comes to everything that emanates from the European Commission and from the European Union elite in their drive towards a superstate.

In every referendum they parroted the words dictated to them from Brussels and Strasbourg. They poured scorn on those of us who warned against the selling out of our sovereignty. They branded us as narrow nationalists, anti-Europeans, extremists and economic illiterates - a litany of names. However, it turns out that our warnings were not half harsh enough. This State has been delivered, bound hand and foot, to the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We are to be bled dry to pay back the monstrous debts incurred by insolvent banks. We are to be sacrificed in the hope of saving the euro. I say "the hope" because there is no guarantee that the euro will be saved or that the end of this economic crisis will not be the collapse of the euro.

Let it not be forgotten that Fine Gael and Labour are the parties that colluded with Fianna Fáil and the Greens in refusing to accept the verdict of the people in the referendum on Lisbon 1. They joined with the EU institutions in browbeating the Irish people in a second referendum. We in Sinn Féin stand by what we said then about Lisbon 2, and I want to read part of that. We said:

The cause of this recession is the drive to deregulate, privatise and cut direct taxation, that have been the hallmarks of governments in this country and across the world in the last number of decades.

They created an economy that was deeply unequal and incredibly vulnerable. Now that the bubble has burst the consequences of these inequalities and vulnerabilities are there for all to see. These right-wing policies have been exposed and totally discredited.

The fact is that the Lisbon Treaty was drafted by the same politicians who led the European economy into recession. It contains many of the right-wing economic policies that have caused the recession and that continue to prevent member state governments from responding effectively to the recession. It is the Treaty of Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevey, of Silvio Berlusconi, Jose Manuel Barroso and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Since 2004 the European Commission, under the stewardship of Portuguese conservative Jose Manuel Barosso, and ably supported by the European Court of Justice, has introduced proposal after proposal undermining sustainable economic growth, public services and workers' rights.

The Commission's singular focus on economic competitiveness has weakened the ability of member states to intervene strategically in the economy to promote economic growth, protect jobs, enhance environmental sustainability and provide universal public services.

Directive after directive has promoted the deregulation of markets in goods and services while other measures such as the rules on state aid and the Growth and Stability Pact have limited the scope for state intervention to strengthen the economy.

This is what Sinn Féin said in a document, Alternative Guide to Lisbon 2, published at that time.

The regressive policies that underpinned the Lisbon treaty helped to cause the economic recession. That is clear and obvious. Those same policies are dictating that the Irish people are to be punished for the greed and recklessness of bankers and financiers, many of them in France and Germany. The current situation in Ireland is similar to what we endured under landlord rule and the British regime in Dublin Castle. At that time the mass of the Irish people endured a bare subsistence in order to support a landlord class, many of the members of which were absentees. A huge proportion of the wealth of Ireland left the country in the form of rents. The ultimate result was mass starvation, eviction and emigration. Many of the hundreds of thousands who were forced to emigrate from our shores sent money to help their relatives back home in Ireland to pay rent and survive in their own land.

During the period to which I refer, the right of private capitalist property was counted more precious than the right to life. The situation today is not as extreme but the scenario is very similar. The so-called right of investors in corrupt banks counts for more than the livelihoods of the Irish people. Irish workers will be labouring for decades to pay the cost of a debt that they had absolutely no part in incurring. People will be impoverished for years to come so gamblers in the financial markets will not be obliged to pay the price of their speculation. Once again our children are being sent into exile and many of them will be sending home remittances to help support families and communities in this country which have been beggared by bad government and voracious financial interests.

All of this has come about as a result of the catastrophic failures of successive Governments during the past decade and because of the so-called solutions they concocted with their banking policy. They arrived at the site of a fire - in the form of the State's debt crisis - and trained their hoses on it. However, what emerged was not water but petrol. Petrol, in the form of the bank guarantee, has been poured on the flames and the conflagration threatens to consume what is left of the economy.

It is incredible that earlier in the debate the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, stated, "To be constantly demanding the dishonour of debt, as some Deputies do, is not good for this country, does not help its interest and is a form of economic treason." That is absolutely breathtaking coming from the former Minister who brought in the IMF and the ECB, who repeatedly poured good money after bad into the banks and who for years had faithfully supported the Governments which created the crisis in the first instance.

According to the former Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, we are guilty of economic treason because we demand that the entire burden of debt should not be borne by the Irish people, that our children and our children's children will not be left with the toxic legacy of Fianna Fáil and its friends - the bankers and developers - and international financial speculators. Is it not also economic treason to demand the restoration of the minimum wage? Perhaps in the former Minister's view of the world, that indeed might be the case.

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