Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

The Government must realise that austerity does not work. Our banking system is in a state of disrepair and barely functional. Individual households are suffering under a huge burden of debt and tens of thousands of people are in severe mortgage arrears. The rules laid out in the austerity treaty are binding and permanent and will be given the protection of the Constitution. They can only be changed by a future referendum and only with the agreement of the other signatory states. How much damage will be done by the time the Government admits this treaty is a bad deal both for Ireland and for Europe?

The people of this country have faced enough austerity in recent years. Cutbacks have been made in education, health and social protection, to name but a few. Almost every person in this State, with the exception of the wealthy, has been touched by the austerity of the current and previous Governments. They are being asked to pay for a crisis they did not cause. The arrival of the troika representatives to these shores signalled a fresh wave of cuts, with no sign of an upturn in the economy. If this treaty is accepted it will place austerity into Irish law indefinitely. Irish people will be forced to pay for the mistakes of European banks to the detriment of their own welfare.

Ultimately, the austerity treaty attacks the very notion of Irish sovereignty and will lead to a further erosion of our political and legal sovereignty. It significantly strengthens the capacity of the European Commission to enforce member state compliance with the existing and new rules. Member states will have signed up to a legally binding obligation automatically to enter a so-called economic partnership programme when they are in breach of the rules. The content of these programmes will be determined by the European Commission and will be very similar to the current EU-IMF austerity programme. This is a significant increase in power for the European Commission at the expense of democratically elected parliaments and governments. The treaty attacks Ireland's legal sovereignty by giving the European Court of Justice jurisdiction to determine whether member states are complying with the debt and deficit rules. Irish Governments will no longer be able to make decisions over the future funding of the State. As such, ratification will bring our national sovereignty further into question.

The Government has demonstrated more than once that it is not adequately adept at negotiating on the European stage. Consider the current debacle over the rights of turf cutters.

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