Dáil debates

Thursday, 5 May 2011

EU-IMF Programme: Statements (Resumed)

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Joe HigginsJoe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

-----for the Irish Parliament, Dáil Éireann, a supposedly sovereign Parliament elected by the people of Ireland, and yet the document before us, the Programme of Financial Support for Ireland and the report on the first and second quarters, addressed to Jean-Claude Juncker, the Eurogroup President of the Financial Ministry, Olli Rehn, the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Jean-Claude Trichet, the European Central Bank president, and others, could be the report of a consul in the ancient Roman empire sent to some far distant place to exact tribute from the natives and then obliged to make regular reports on the rate of extraction of tribute with the threat of force and the power of an empire behind him. That is what this document reminds me of.

There is huge detail in this document with regard to the burden put on the Irish people to pay off the tens of billions of euro of bad gambling debts by European bankers, speculating with Irish bankers and developers in the Irish property bubble to reap massive profits when the going was good but then transferring that onto the shoulders of the Irish people by a treacherous decision of the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government, and an equally treacherous continuation of that decision by the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition. Page 15, however, is the nadir of the entire document and it is an issue that has not been commented on to any great extent. This relates to the changes the Irish Government is proposing in the retirement age for social welfare pension purposes. It states, humiliatingly, that we are taking proactive measures to reduce our long-term pension liabilities. It further states that the next few months will see significant changes to pension terms put into law and that the most important of these changes is a three step increase in the retirement age for social welfare pensions from 65 to 68 over 2014 to 2028. Page 28 of the document specifies further that under the national pension framework the age at which people will qualify for the social welfare pension will be increased to 66 years in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028.

The struggle for the shorter working day, week and year, and shorter working years in the lives of workers, was a defining struggle of the organisations of the working class going back almost 150 years. As a result of the heroic struggles of working men and women, tremendous progress had been made in that regard including the eight hour day, the 40 hour five day week, etc., to allow people to have time for rest and recreation with their friends and families, and it became a norm of what we considered a civilised life.

What we have in this year of 2011 is a pushing back of those huge achievements of the organised working class over almost a century and a half. It speaks volumes-----

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