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

The Minister accepts this. Why are we bringing in a treaty focusing on those issues rather than the actual causes of the economic crisis? In order to pay back bankers, speculators, German and French banks and bondholders, we must meet deficit and debt targets; it is to recover gambling losses at our expense. The consequences will be devastating if we must meet these targets. After we get out of the troika programme, we will need approximately €6 billion in austerity cuts and measures, and if this fiscal compact kicks in by 2015, we will need approximately 5% cuts in spending annually for four years in order to meet targets.

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