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

Where is our referendum on this crazy policy of bailing out bondholders and inflicting brutal austerity on ordinary people? How can the Taoiseach justify the pre-election rhetoric of describing the bailing out of the bondholders of Anglo Irish Bank as economic treason when his Government has chosen to continue committing treason now that the election is over? Where is his respect for democracy and the citizens of the country when the people of Greece have won the right, through protest and people power, to have a democratic vote on whether they want to continue with the crazy policy of bailing out bondholders and having brutal austerity imposed on them and he denies to the people of this country the same right? Where is his concern for the many dozens of sick and vulnerable elderly and young people who are lying on trolleys in hospitals throughout the country as we speak, and for the communities from west Cork to Loughlinstown, Blanchardstown, Letterkenny and Roscommon who are living with the fear that, arising from the cuts the Government is inflicting on the health service, they may not have an accident and emergency service in their community if they ever have such a service? It is shameful that while such cuts are being made, the Taoiseach is willing to hand over €700 million, almost exactly the same amount as has been slashed from the health budget, to anonymous speculators and gamblers on the financial market.

Where is the Government's analysis of developments in the eurozone? Does it have any idea of what is taking place? According to every serious commentator and analysis, the Government's strategy for achieving export-led growth is delusional because the European economy is contracting under the impact of the austerity this Government and other European leaders are imposing and more of which they are demanding be imposed across the eurozone. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the International Labour Organisation have both stated austerity is not working, as has the OECD. Even the IMF has downgraded its growth projections for the European economy. Despite these warnings, the Government continues to peddle the fantasy that Ireland will have an export-led recovery and repeatedly speaks of achieving growth. All the facts, whether in Greece, here or anywhere else in Europe, demonstrate that imposing brutal austerity, slashing jobs and leaving large numbers of people unemployed - in our case, almost 500,000 people - have the effect of contracting growth, deepening recession and choking off any possibility of achieving the type of recovery the Government seeks. Notwithstanding this, it persists with the madness.

There is an expression that when one is in a hole, one should stop digging, but the Government continues to dig under the diktat of the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. Is it not the case that the people of Greece, through people power and protest, have achieved much more than any of the European leaders at all their crisis summits with all their talk of comprehensive solutions that unravel within days because, and the Taoiseach should not, as he consistently does, misinterpret what I am saying, the Greeks have at least forced on to the agenda the idea that the bondholders should pay and be burned and also forced others to question the austerity policy that has been such a disaster for them and the rest of Europe? Is it not also the case that people in this country should do exactly the same as people are doing on Wall Street and in Athens, Italy and many other parts of the world, namely, getting out on the streets and calling for an end to the madness? This is a simple choice, one of deciding who comes first: the anonymous bondholders and speculators or ordinary people and their right to a job, decent public services and a future. It is time for the Taoiseach to make the choice. However, it seems that currently he has pinned his colours to the mast with the greedy vultures who are wrecking our society. It is about time he remembered who put him in power.

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