Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

The fiction that this amending legislation will make the IMF more democratic has no foundation.

It is suggested this organisation is neutral which, again, could not be further from the truth. It is certainly not neutral in the policies which it pursues which discriminate against middle and lower income people and poor countries while supporting wealthy nations and sectors of society such as bondholders, speculators, developers and their like.

The IMF, with its partnership with the former Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government and the current Labour-Fine Gael coalition Government, pursues an austerity programme in Ireland. This austerity programme has led to almost 500,000 people unemployed. This Government came to power on the promise of job creation. Everyone now agrees it was elected on a falsehood and is now implementing the same programme as its predecessor's. Central Statistics Office figures from this week show this Government's policies, in partnership with the IMF and the EU, are destroying jobs. In the first quarter of the Government's tenure, 4,100 jobs were destroyed; in the second quarter, 20,000 jobs. Up to the third quarter of this year, we had the horrendous situation where 25,000 jobs were destroyed by the policies pursued by the Government.

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