Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)

The contrast between the manner in which the Government is prepared to continue with the disastrous bank bailout and that in which ordinary citizens are being treated could not be starker. Fine Gael and Labour are hardly a wet day in office and they have already gone back on their promises to make the bondholders pay and not to pour more good money into the black hole of the bank bailout. At the same time their commitments to offer some relief to the rest of us have either been shelved or placed on the long finger by promising reviews of various Fine Gael and Labour election proposals rather than actually proceeding to implement them. Normally one might ascribe this simply to cynicism on the part of parties which have achieved power and which now believe they can simply drop whatever commitments they made in order to win it. In fact we are dealing with something far worse and far more sinister in regard to the abandoned election promises of the current Government parties.

We have already seen that their promise to reverse the cut to the national minimum wage requires the approval of the IMF and the EU. It would appear also that they are bound by everything that is contained in the IMF-EU memorandum of understanding in respect of the banks. Hence, the reason we are discussing this issue today. Is it the case that the programme for Government is only valid in so far as it commits to implementing, to the letter and on schedule, the timetable of austerity measures and aspects of the bank bailout contained in the IMF-EU document?

We know that high-ranking members of Labour and Fine Gael were briefed by officials from the IMF, EU and ECB last November when the deal was put in place. It is interesting that a Labour official informed the media after its meeting that his party's representatives had been told, "Measures that would reduce the effectiveness of the plan would not be welcome". The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, stated at the time that he and his colleagues had been given a comprehensive overview of what was in the memorandum of understanding and the measures required for its implementation.

Perhaps a Minister from either one or both parties might enlighten me as to whether this included their being informed that they would not be in a position to alter anything substantive in the memorandum. If so, did this include their being told that they could not reverse the cut to the national minimum wage? If the latter is the case, then judging by the programme mapped out by the IMF and the EU there is not much wriggle room. As a result, a great deal of what was contained in the election manifestos of Fine Gael and Labour will not only not be implemented because of the austerity plan, but they will not be allowed to implement the proposals they put forward even if they wanted to do so.

There is also the issue that if both parties which are currently in government knew that they would be bound by the memorandum of understanding, then the election campaign was something of a charade. I say this because much of it was fought on the basis of promises regarding the banks and the bondholders and reversing the cut to the minimum wage. Both parties knew they would be unable to fulfil these promises once they accepted, as they have done, the parameters of the bailout and the consequent austerity programme.

As already stated, the contrast between the speed with which the Government has moved to continue to save the toxic banks and to protect the bondholders and its shelving of promises made to beleaguered citizens could not be starker. In the programme for Government, the current Administration attacks the policy of "putting the interests of big developers and the banks ahead of people looking to purchase a home". The new Government also commits itself to assisting homeowners. However, in contrast with its actions in the context of pouring more money into the banks, all we get are promises to examine a number of options regarding how homeowners might be given some relief. One of these options includes a two-year moratorium on repossessions of family homes. That is something which, I am sure, everyone here would welcome. I will believe it when I see it, because in common with many of their election promises and their commitments in the programme for Government, actions are being replaced by reviews. They will review options to help mortgage holders and review the universal social charge. That is simply not good enough. The people struggling or unable to pay their mortgages, the people finding it more difficult to make ends meet because of the anti-social universal charge and the minimum wage workers who will be down at least €40 a week do not need reviews. They need actions that provide them with a chance to survive the onslaught on the ordinary people of this State unleashed on behalf of failed native bankers and speculators and anonymous international bondholders. These are people who we only know through their cats' paws like Sir Peter Sutherland, who has selflessly put himself forward as a neutral and disinterested advisor on how best to ensure that the protection racketeering branch of his company, Goldman Sachs, gets its pound of flesh.

According to the Government we have a moral obligation to pay back these people, beggar ourselves and destroy our economy in the process. Who exactly are these noble bondholders, to whom we owe so much? There is a list on the Internet which provides the names of 80 of those who someone last week described as "surely the luckiest gamblers on the face of the planet". Curiously, the mainstream media appear reluctant to publish the list, perhaps for fear of causing offence. According to the person who compiled the list, those companies that hold Anglo Irish bonds have combined assets under their control of almost €21 trillion. Their Anglo Irish bonds constitute a miserly €4 billion. That is around 0.02% of the value of the total assets under their management. They sound to me like people who might be better able to take a small loss than the cleaner on the minimum wage or the low-paid worker who has to pay the universal social charge. One of the senior Anglo bondholders is EFG Bank, based in Switzerland and 40% owned by Spiro Latsis, who is estimated to be worth around €9 billion.

Among them also are our old friends Goldman Sachs. I came across a few interesting descriptions of Goldman Sachs. Someone once described them as being like the fireman who starts the fire and then turns up to put the fire out but also ensures that the property burns to the ground. Rolling Stone magazine memorably and poetically described them as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". A bit dramatic perhaps but when one considers the amount of financial and economic power wielded by Goldman Sachs and the fact that power is often wielded to the disadvantage of the citizens of the states in which it is embroiled, it is not altogether an unfair one. Those are some of the people who the Government and its predecessor have decided need to be looked after before their own citizens.

Having acted the hard men, threatening that it would be Labour's way or Frankfurt's way and promising that the senior bondholders would be told to take a running jump, they have quickly and meekly bent the knee. Even the crumb of a 1% interest rate cut has been put on the back burner and is now dependent on how well our IMF and EU masters decide we are shaping up under their austerity programme. Given all that and given the manner in which they have been happy to pick up the poisoned chalice of the bank bailout, perhaps it would have been more honest of them to have simply published the memorandum of understanding as the programme for Government rather than go through the charade of pretending that there is any way other than the EU's and IMF's as long as we continue to pick up the tab for these failed banks.

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