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

The Government has rightly and justifiably criticised the previous Government for its policy failures and actions which contributed to the property bubble and crash, the banking crisis and so on. However, while the Government may be able to excuse itself from what the previous Government did, it is signing up to a pact which will be as destructive of our democratic right to control our economic policy as the IMF-EU package. The pact, essentially, hands over control of economic policy in this and every country in the European Union to the European Commission and gives it power to decide on an annual basis what it calls "country specific" policies through which it will set out in key areas of economic policy what we must do. We will have to do what is proposed and the Commission will impose penalties on us if we do not. Is this not a handing over on a permanent - not just a temporary - basis of control of key economic issues? Is it not amazing that we are doing this in a situation where the general outline of the economic priorities set out in the euro pact perpetuates the same failed economic doctrine that led to the financial crisis in Europe - a constant obsession with what Mr. Nyberg rightly called in his report the "naive belief in the efficiency of markets"? It is still all about us being forced to accept the efficiency of markets model to dictate what happens to the economy, which means austerity, cutbacks and privatisation.

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