Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

That is in the event the Government does not consider, for other reasons, that there should be a referendum. There is nothing which bars the Government from holding a referendum. The people have experienced three years of ongoing austerity, cuts, attacks on their living standards and the stripping down of services in the pursuit of a ruinous policy of bailing out bankers and financial institutions. That policy is killing the economy. I put it to the Taoiseach that holding a referendum would give the people the opportunity to exercise their democratic right just over one year after they went to the polls in the general election. Those in government promised to put in place fundamentally different policies from those pursued by their predecessors. However, since entering office they have performed an about face and aped - almost to the dot and comma - the austerity policies of their predecessors. In the context of justice, democracy and fairness, the people should be given a say.

Is the Government afraid to go to the people, engage with them in a democratic discussion and then allow them to vote? Is that the real issue? Can the Taoiseach not see that handing over essential elements of control of the economy and fiscal policy of one of the member states of the European Union to the right-wing, neoliberal European Commission which is anti-public sector and pro-privatisation in every way and never misses an opportunity to come down in favour of the corporate sector at the expense of working people represents a serious surrender of the rights of the people he claims to represent?

See this speech in context