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

The Taoiseach rightly condemned Fianna Fáil for crashing our economy and forcing us into the hands of the EU-IMF troika but does he not agree that the proposed deal will institutionalise what he rightly describes as the loss of our economic sovereignty? We will lose democratic control over our economic affairs for perpetuity. There will be centralised, Stalinist control by the European Commission and the ECB over national economies and ordinary people will be disenfranchised.

Was there any discussion about the summit being the umpteenth attempt to come up with some sort of crisis resolution mechanism? Days, if not hours, after the conclusion of every previous summit the solutions began to unravel because the beloved markets decided they would not work. The bottom line problem underlying this pattern is that the austerity programme is crippling growth and even the markets realise a solution will not be found while the European economy is contracting. This proposal will set in stone an economic austerity agenda which will have the same effect.

Was any mention made of the contrasting fate of Iceland? I do not suggest that Iceland is perfect but it took a different response to the crisis and even the IMF praised its decision to allow its banks to fail. It did not reduce expenditure on the welfare state-----

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