Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Taoiseach said that one of the issues at the summit was that of contagion. Does he accept that so-called contagion, as it relates to Italy and Spain, is not an uncontrollable disease, but the threatened actions of financial speculators who would take the opportunity to blackmail the people of Italy and Spain by implementing usurious interest rates because of their control of the financial markets? Does he see any contradiction in the supposedly democratically elected leaders at EU summits jumping to the diktats of private institutions in the financial markets which dictate economic policy, savage austerity policies and cuts in services? Is there not a massive contradiction there? Does the Taoiseach not think it is a vile system that sees, today, the speculators who bought Anglo Irish Bank bonds on the secondary or tertiary markets walking away with perhaps €300 million in profit on the backs of the Irish people? Does he not think this is a vile system that needs to be fundamentally remade?

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