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

The deference and submission of this Government to the diktats of the EU and IMF would be understandable if the troika's strategy showed any sign at all in the last two years of working and any measure of success in containing the crisis and helping to move Europe in a positive direction. It is bizarre in the extreme, given the utter disarray at the European Council, that the Taoiseach should seek to put a positive spin in this House on what is happening. We have had one crisis summit after another, delays, postponements and talk of treaty changes. It goes on and on as the crisis worsens and spreads further. We are now at a point where there are serious fears of a massive collapse in the European economy.

The Government does not seem to comprehend why all of this is happening. The reality is that the policy of bailing out banks and imposing austerity simply does not work. It was always unfair and brutal but, above all, it just does not work. Rather, it contracts growth, which leads to worsening public finances as growth declines, and the downward spiral continues. Greece is in trouble not because its citizens are resisting and, as a result, have forced at least some of the pain onto bondholders. Greece is in deep trouble because the austerity measures demanded of it continue to intensify, on top of those measures already imposed in the last two years. That is what is causing the Greek economy to contract.

It is now proposed to do the same to Italy, after which it will be done to the rest of Europe. The austerity measures this country is facing will only intensify. How can one expect a different result in the rest of Europe from the disastrous outcome in Greece? The alternative is to say that jobs and economic growth come first and that we will not sacrifice them in order continually to bail out bankers, financiers and bondholders.

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