Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion. The decision of the former Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government to issue these promissory notes for unguaranteed unsecured senior bonds represents a decision which already has had and will continue to have a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Irish people. Ultimately, they will cost the taxpayer an estimated €74 billion and could even cost as much as €90 billion. People have become so familiar with talking about exorbitant figures like this that the consequence of such decisions is often lost. However, Members have the moral responsibility to ask how this can be justified. How can this be justified as we watch our children emigrate, our partners lose jobs and our parents being failed by a defunct health service? Moreover, all this is taking place as additional taxes are being heaped in a crude and blunt way onto every worker in the State with a promise of more to come. Health levies and the universal social charge have been imposed while property and water taxes are promised. Ordinary people are suffering greatly to meet their weekly and monthly bills. Mortgages, utility bills, groceries and ever increasing education bills have seen families pressed to the pins of their collars and heaven forbid if one is obliged to depend on the State for social welfare.

It is no consolation when one hears Government spokespersons assert that we must follow this economic pathway, we have no choice and are beholden to the ECB and IMF, which have set out the roadmap we must diligently follow, including the scandalous payment of these promissory notes, to prevent contagion. At the same time, there is a constant suggestion that a better deal is just around the corner. It is suggested that if we are the best boys and girls in the class, if we continue to toe the line at the expense of our people, we will be rewarded at some undefined point in the future. It reminds me a little of the character Baldrick in the "Blackadder" television series, who always had a cunning plan. The Government's cunning plan is like Baldrick's, in that it is not very cunning and is not really a plan.

Separately, it is completely disingenuous the Government and its spokespersons to continually trot out the line that were it not for this approach, we would be unable to pay doctors, nurses, teachers and gardaí who do such important work every day. In some sort of quick-handed trick, next week's salary is dangled before one's eyes as bus loads of billions are parked outside the homes of the banking and business elites. The current economic strategy is well and truly bust as it fails to deliver jobs or growth. The Government cannot continue down this road on the pretence the world would collapse were we to fight our corner. In fact, by so doing it would give those with us at the heart of Europe the opportunity to deal with this enormous crisis in a real and meaningful way and not in the piecemeal fashion that has marked the Government's efforts to date. The people voted for change last February, much of which was promised by the two Government parties. They have failed to deliver and have failed to live up to their commitments.

Now more than ever, while all around us appears uncertain, Ireland needs a strong and assured Government that will defend the rights of its people to as just an entitlement as that of their European or international colleagues. It needs a Government that will ensure above all that the most vulnerable in society are protected. To date, none of this has been evident. The rules of international capitalism have been thrown out the window. For a well protected few, it does not matter how successful one is at playing the game, as one is a guaranteed winner. Moreover, this is the case even if one had been told specifically at the outset that one was not a guaranteed winner. Unguaranteed can become guaranteed and a winner always stays a winner. In the last two weeks, when faced with a decision between democracy and the markets, Europe spoke loud and clear: the markets rule. Sinn Féin will stand by the people first and not the markets and the Government should do likewise.

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