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

As the Taoiseach heads off to this meeting, has it dawned on him even a little that the EU, IMF and ECB simply do not have a clue what they are doing, that the policy of bailing out the bankers and the bondholders and imposing brutal austerity on ordinary people is not only unjust but is making the crisis worse and is spreading the contagion? Has it occurred to him - flashed on his radar screen at all - that the EU-IMF medicine is a poison that, rather than curing, threatens to kill the patient? Has it crossed his mind that the EU, IMF and ECB do not care what happens to ordinary citizens here, working people and those with special needs, but are simply acting as the agents of the financial markets and big corporate interests which want to asset strip this country, Greece and Portugal just as they have done elsewhere?

Does the Taoiseach know, for example, anything at all about the history of the IMF and the trail of destruction, poverty and war that it has left in its wake as it has gone in to assist countries? Does he know, for example, that two champions of IMF austerity and privatisation programmes are General Pinochet in Chile and the not lamented former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and that the IMF policies that they imposed on their countries in so-called structural adjustment devastated those countries and their people? Does the Taoiseach want to go down in history in the company of tyrants such as Pinochet and Mubarak who imposed such brutal policies on the people of their countries? Does it jar with the Taoiseach that as he and others in this House, and the bankers, developers and politicians who helped create and preside over this crisis, head off on their holidays, hundreds of thousands of working people here will not have any holidays and will not even know whether they can meet the bills over the summer months? Is it not time to say the bankers and financiers who caused the crisis should pay for it and that our natural resources and the wealth in our society should be used to create jobs and protect public services and the vulnerable in our society instead of bailing out the insatiable monster that has wrecked the European economy?

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