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

In effect, is the ESM and the souped-up EFSM with corresponding or connected centralised economic governance criteria - the so-called six-pack - not a new treaty? It will centralise economic policy as a condition of bailing out countries and give more control to unelected and unaccountable central European authorities to dictate economic policy to countries that are in these mechanisms. The Taoiseach is not directly answering the question as to whether there is any discussion at all about these serious voices which are saying that the austerity strategy may not just be unfair, as many of us believe it is, but also counterproductive. Is there any discussion of that or acknowledgement that these people might have a point?

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