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

I want to return to the financial transactions tax. This is one of the instances in which people from the United Left Alliance have a very different view from the political establishment on both sides of the House. I am amazed that in a situation where Europe faces its gravest economic crisis since the 1930s and this country faces its gravest economic crisis in its history - we all know the crisis was caused by the anarchic casino-like behaviour of the financial markets - the strategy of the Government, with Mr. David Cameron's Government, is to block a tiny measure to regulate and rein in these same financial markets that have wrecked the European economy. The excuse that we cannot do it unless everybody else in the world does it also is pathetic because it is a recipe for never doing it, as the Taoiseach and Mr. Cameron well know.

I find it amazing that the Taoiseach, like the previous Government, has rammed poisonous destructive austerity down the throats of the people, ordinary citizens who bear no responsibility for the economic crisis, and says he is being made do it by the European Union and the troika. However, when one half decent proposal comes from the European Union, that we should put a tiny tax on the crazed financial markets that caused the crisis, we cannot do it because it is too difficult and would wreck the economy. We can wreck the lives of working people, force hundreds of thousands into mass unemployment, send tens of thousands abroad by way of forced emigration, but we cannot put a tiny tax on the financial institutions which wrecked the economy, as well as the entire European economy.

How will we ever have a financial transactions tax if this is the attitude? The previous Government which bankrupted the country made similar arguments about the property sector; it called on us to look at the employment created in property development and the stamp duty received and stated it could not possibly do anything to dampen the sector because of the economy's dependency on it. It seems the Taoiseach wants to do the same with the financial services sector. This is very shortsighted. Any short-term advantage the Taoiseach or Mr. Cameron may think they will get from-----

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