Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

In essence we are talking about a managed default position, where the establishment throughout Europe has understood that what was posed for Greece, given the scale of the debt, amounted to a disorderly default position. It did not want to envisage such a scenario and so the debt was rescheduled in the manner before us today, with a scheme for extending the period for repayments in return for a second bailout. The key point to register is that this was not just granted and is not a benevolent move. What is being demanded in payment for this deal is a package of so-called reforms that are akin to unleashing the fires of hell on the population of Greece.

This scenario has been compared to the position in Latin America in the second half of the 1980s and it is strongly reminiscent in many ways of the Brady plan implemented in that area. We saw how that plan played a significant role both in defending bankers' interests on the one hand and imposing permanent austerity on the other. The plan for Greece essentially does the same thing by reducing the value of debt stocks, which will be swapped for new bonds, with private banks reducing their exposure to Greece, as they have done previously with Latin America. Gradually but massively, the public creditors, including the likes of our friends in the troika, will take over and exert enormous pressure in order to ensure the new bonds held by the banks are repaid in full with interest on capital.

We should register that every cent of the so-called loans to Greece will be used to repay its debts. Meanwhile, the troika is demanding permanent austerity in the form of social expenditure cuts, massive privatisation, regression in economic and social rights and other actions that we have not seen since the end of World War II. As payment for that, we would see a surrender of sovereignty, which is really disgraceful. In Latin America the period was called the long neoliberal night and there is something similar here. We should register that even in Latin America they never reached a level of indebtedness currently experienced by the eurozone, with a level of 160% of GDP in the case of Greece.

I will spell out what is being demanded of the Greek population and we should look at the shock therapy to which these people are being exposed. The memorandum of impoverishment, as it has been correctly called in my opinion, proposes a number of measures, such as reductions in salaries by 22%, the minimum wage going to €751 per month, the abolition of sectoral bargaining agreements, the freezing of wage bills until 2015, full-time employment being converted to part-time employment based on the decision of employers and a massive decimation of what was already a vulnerable pension position. Pensions will be reduced by €300 million annually, with the new cuts affecting all schemes.

One of the most reprehensible measures is the reduction in employer contributions being imposed, with a 2% reduction in the social contributions of employers through the abolition of contributions for the workers' housing organisation and other social benefits. These organisations will essentially be forced to close down as a result. There will be a further reduction of 3% in the contributions paid by employers in the private sector in 2013. It is worth noting that these measures were pushed through on a Sunday night on 12 February and the very next day the Greek Government was faced with the European Commissioner responsible for economic affairs stating that it was not enough. He wanted another €325 million in cuts to be introduced within 48 hours, in essence suspending whatever limited democracy already exists.

On top of grinding austerity is the abolition of permanent employment in former state-owned companies, dismissal of 15,000 employees in the public sector this year, cuts of over 150,000 by 2015 and a process that will go on and on. There will be cuts of €636 million in salaries for public sector workers, and that is without considering reductions in benefits to families with more than three children, cuts in social benefits, a property tax as part of people's electricity bill, reduction in the overtime of doctors, and decreases in public investment. This is the massacre being demanded as a result of the deal in front of us today.

What we now have in Europe is the spectacle of an almost open colonial-style agenda being foisted by the stronger European economies, led by German capitalism, and this is effectively egged on and they are being allowed to get away with it by the obedient collaborators in the small, weaker economies like our own. In order to deliver, people have been prepared to throw to the side what would be considered democratic norms, such as the right to elect one's own government and so on. The only way in which this issue will be addressed ultimately is through ordinary people mobilising and uniting across national boundaries throughout Europe. On the back of the imposed austerity, we have already seen the beginnings of this in a magnificent way with seven general strikes in Greece last year; major movements in Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Spain; the overthrow of the government in Romania and so on.

The task for ordinary people in Europe now is to build a European-wide movement based on an unambiguous rejection of the payment of the national debt to market vultures and institutions like the ECB. The genuine investments of working people, including pension funds, must be protected, but the siphoning of society's resources for a debt that was not ours in the first place is not the way forward. This money and these resources should be invested in emergency programmes for putting people to work, engendering economic activity and ending austerity. The measures being put forward now offer no solution, which we know, as it has been the show in town. The choice is accepting further attacks on rights and being kicked out of the eurozone or taking more austerity and being kicked out in future; that is not a choice worth making. The way forward is for people across Europe to unite and begin to organise to benchmark living standards against their own governments, which now seem to be more interested in protecting the wealthy rather than their own populations.

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