Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

My first problem with the Bill - I have many - is the Title. The use of the word "Resolution" in this sense is gobbledygook. Why do we not call it "The Bill to Provide for the Bailout of the Private Banking Sector when it gets into Trouble, Potentially at the Taxpayers Expense"?

Section 4, at paragraph (f), is much clearer on the purpose of the Bill. It states:

[T]o provide a mechanism to prevent the financial instability, or threat to the financial stability, of an authorised credit institution [May I say "bank" for simplicity] contributing to financial instability of any other...[bank], the financial system or the economy, and to avoid creating a risk of such financial instability.

That is my first major problem as we are suffering the current economic catastrophe because banks have wrecked the economy, created massive financial instability and then economic instability. The question is not asked at all in the legislation why that happened, how it happened and why it was allowed to happen.

The first issue that should underlie any legislation in response to the present catastrophe is why private institutions, major banks, hedge funds, major insurance companies and assorted other speculative agencies are afforded such power as to be in a position to wreak havoc on an economy as a result of their activities, which means wreak havoc on society, on the livelihoods and lives of tens and hundreds of millions of people. Why should financial institutions such as banks be given such power that their actions can therefore result not just in national crisis but worldwide systemic crisis affecting the lives of countless millions?

What are banks? What are the credit institutions? They are institutions run by unelected, self-perpetuating cliques, thoroughly undemocratic in how they operate. They are unaccountable to the people whose lives they wreck, the vast majority of people in society. They are faceless and unelected in any democratic sense of the term. Their primary function is to make massive profits for their private, corporate owners.

All one has to do is look at the major international banks that were up to their necks in speculation on the sub-prime mortgage situation in the United States, which laid the basis on the toxic debt that it built up, the bundling of that toxic debt and its sale all over the world for the massive economic crisis of 2008. Let us take one such bank that was intimately involved in the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Goldman Sachs. In the Rolling Stone magazine in 2010, Matt Taibbi, summed up brilliantly the role of Goldman Sachs, a major international bank, in the woes that have been created for working people throughout the world including in this country. He wrote:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

The Bill has nothing to say on the ethical question of why such institutions should continue to be afforded such power over the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the world. In fact, it accepts that private corporate ownership and the massive power that the institutions are afforded in society and then proceeds to legislate weakly and feebly on the situation.

Mr Peter Sutherland is the chairman of Goldman Sachs International and by coincidence is a Fine Gael grandee as well. Last year Mr. Sutherland rather sternly warned the working people in this country that the cuts that were to be imposed in the following budget of December 2010 were not enough. He said the cuts should be far greater and he argued against a slower rate of budget cuts, saying:

This simply will not fly as an option. Any weakness in one budget will be punished by the market in a manner which we will be unable to take.

People such as Mr. Sutherland have some audacity in lecturing us, in view of the role of the institution of which he is a key linchpin in the crisis we face at present. He declares that any weakness will be punished by the market and never asks the question, as most of our media never ask, of who or what is the market. The market is spoken of as if it were a divine power, raised over society, whose every edict must be obeyed and in front of whom ordinary people have to be sacrificed. Martyn Turner's cartoon in last Friday's The Irish Times brilliantly encompasses this idea. There is a high priest of the troika - ECB, EU and IMF - sacrificing the Greek people on an altar while declaring "O gods of the markets, banking & business behold our sacrifice....". Ominously, the next unfortunate in the line, trussed up to be put on the fire, is Ireland, followed by Portugal. That sums up, in a simple cartoon, the truth about which the establishment in this country, from RTE right across the media, has not been prepared to be truthful. Who or what are these markets that Mr. Sutherland, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, warns us not to upset? Lo and behold, Mr. Sutherland is talking about himself, as a corporate entity.

Some time ago, when the paramilitary campaigns were going on in Northern Ireland - they were reactionary, disgusting campaigns, but we cannot get into that now - there was a joke among the establishment media. When the leadership of Sinn Féin said seriously and with great deliberation that they would talk to the IRA, the response was that they would just have to go into a room and talk to themselves. We have had no such exposure of the reality with regard to the markets. These grandees, whether they are Fine Gael members or establishment figures from all over the world, whose words warn us that we must accept cuts in public expenditure, through privatisation and so on because otherwise the markets will create havoc in Spain, are talking about institutions in which they themselves are intimately involved. We have had a cover-up of that reality and this Bill simply carries on that cover-up. Goldman Sachs, again, made a fortune on the sub-prime market when it was on the up and then, with consummate cynicism, seeing that it was going to collapse, bet on its collapse and made a fortune when it was on the way down. These are the institutions in front of which a supposedly sovereign Irish Government, the Greek Government, and an EU whose leadership used to lecture me weekly, when I was in the European Parliament, on what a great democratic institution it was, fall on their faces. They demand that European workers accept these massive cuts to jobs, living standards and public services to satisfy the markets. It is incredible.

We see the chaos that the market system is causing our fellow citizens in Greece at present. Happily, the Greek working class is fighting this vicious attack on them with a magnificent 48-hour strike. The media, of course, will home in on the few fellows with black masks who are burning things, most of whom are agents provocateurs from the police trying to discredit the movement, but not dwell on the millions of workers who are taking strike action and using their power in a very disciplined fashion. Our interest lies with them.

Will this Bill solve or provide a basis for a solution to the disasters caused by private corporate ownership of the financial system - in other words, the markets? No. It is a recipe for more bailouts into the future. This system is subject to crisis after crisis as a result of how it is set up and as a result of the private ownership of these massive financial institutions and their lust for profit.

Sections 9, 10 and 11 of the Bill deal with financial input into a fund to guard against losses in the future. It states, rather vaguely, that it should grow over time to try to meet contingencies that would arise. Does anybody think that, for example, such a fund in Anglo Irish Bank would rise to anything like the €30 billion or €35 billion that Irish sovereign Governments are forcing the taxpayer to put in to salvage the wreckage it created?

Section 11 states that the Minister may contribute to the fund - with taxpayers' money, of course - and that he or she "is entitled to be reimbursed from the Fund for all contributions". The wording is not "shall be reimbursed" but "is entitled to be reimbursed". This is simply a recipe for putting more taxpayers' money in to bail out private institutions, which will find other subterfuges for sucking money out of ordinary people, as they have done on the subprime market and in other areas. The Nyberg report is very clear in this regard; I am surprised Deputy Mathews did not refer to it. Incidentally, when writing about the dictatorship of the markets, Nyberg states that in 2008, when it was thought that problems were coming down the line, one reason resolution legislation could not be considered was that if the news had got out that it was being drafted it could have had a serious destabilising effect on the markets. It is quite incredible. Nyberg also states: "However, the existence of a resolution regime in itself would not necessarily have been a panacea to avoid high fiscal costs to the State in the absence of burden sharing with creditors." In other words, it would not have made a blind bit of difference in reality.

I have no confidence whatsoever in the powers given to the Central Bank. The Central Bank and its leadership played a baleful role in the Irish banking crisis. It did not attempt to restrain the profiteering and racketeering that was going on and the outrageous exploitation of young working people when the prices of homes were being doubled, trebled and quadrupled and bankers and developers were raking it in in the most obscene fashion. It was then central to bouncing the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government into bringing in the troika. It was obviously a tottering, rotten Government that had no moral authority whatsoever. Why did the Governor of the Central Bank facilitate those coming in to carry out the agenda of the ECB and the EU - that is, to save the massive German, British, French and other financial institutions on the backs of the Irish working class? We are now expected to have confidence in this institution to play a central role in resolving any further or future banking crisis. No way. The alternative is to get rid of this diseased system in which faceless and unelected corporations and individuals have so much power over society. It is time for democratic control and public ownership of the financial system so that its activities are geared towards the well-being and development of society and its people, as well as the creation of employment. This must be extended across Europe. If the Irish people were to adopt such a demand, millions of Europeans from Greece, Portugal and Spain would join them because they are also suffering from this diseased system and the parasites who run it.

Níl an Bille seo, ar a ngairtear Acht do dhéanamh socrú maidir le córas réitigh éifeachtach dlúsúil d'fhorais creidmheasa áirithe ar an gcostas is lú don Stát, sásúil ar chor ar bith, mar nach dtéann sé go croí lár na faidhbe atá againn i láthair na huaire nó go croí lár an fháth go bhfuil an fhadhb úafásach ins an gcóras airgeadais, agus dá bhrí sin ins an gcóras eacnamaíochta, i láthair na huaire. Bunús na faidhbe ná úinéireacht príobháideach ar chorporáidí móra, ar institiúidí airgeadais, ar bainc agus a leithéid agus úsáid na hinstitiúidí úd mar thobair do bhrabús thar fóir dóibh féinig. Dá bhrí sin, tá an cumhacht ollmhór eacnamaíochta á ligint leis na hinstitiúidí seo agus ciallaíonn sé sin go n-éireoidh na fadhbanna ceanann céanna arís agus arís eile. Ní théann an Bille i ndeighleáil leis an bhfadhb úd.

Dá bhrí sin, úinéireacht poiblí faoi stiúriú daonlathach atá ag teastáil maidir leis na hinstitiúidí airgeadais agus leis an gcóras airgeadais. Go dtí go mbeidh córas den tsaghas sin againn beidh an saghas géarchéim atá againn i láthair na huaire arís agus arís eile go mbeidh na milliún de lucht oibre na tíre seo agus na hEorpa thíos leis sin. Dá bhrí sin, caithfimid gluas a chur leis an díospóireacht maidir le malairt ar an gcóras airgeadais, ó thaobh an tsochaí agus ó thaobh thromlach na ndaoine. I mo thuairim is í an mhalairt shóisialach ar cheart dúinn a chur chun cinn.

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