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

Is the Taoiseach not going to tell our European partners that their strategy for dealing with the financial and economic crisis is in absolute tatters and that it is a disaster which is strangling economic growth as well as causing great suffering for people throughout Europe? Even on its own terms it is strangling economic growth and threatens to tip the European economy into recession. No matter how much they inflict the poison of austerity the situation gets worse, becomes deeper and spreads the contagion. Will the Taoiseach not tell them this? Will he not pose serious questions about what a disastrous failure the policy of bailing out the banks and imposing austerity has been for Greece and threatens to be for the rest of Europe? This has happened in a situation where Greek bondholders will be burnt to the tune of 50% now and, despite not imposing all the austerity demanded by the troika, the Greeks still got their €8 billion. Will the Taoiseach not question President Van Rompuy and the European authorities about their insistence that there should be no burning of Irish bondholders and that we should benefit in no way from the plans to burn bondholders in Greece? As a consequence, the Taoiseach's strategy of being the best boy in the class in Europe has failed disastrously.

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