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

The Government's determination to support the austerity treaty is increasingly bizarre. It appears to be taking the best boy in the class routine a bit too far. Yesterday the revolt against the austerity agenda and the treaty spread to Germany. The architect of the treaty and guru of austerity, Chancellor Angela Merkel, cannot even get the treaty through her own Parliament. The Tánaiste's comrades in the SPD explained their refusal to ratify the fiscal treaty as a refusal to support a cutback orgy. If his comrades can make such a claim in the context of the relatively healthy German economy, how on earth can he support the same cutback orgy that would be required in the traumatised Irish economy to meet the targets of the fiscal treaty? It is extraordinary.

Can he confirm his Minister's assertion in this House yesterday that even if we vote "No" to the fiscal treaty we will still commit up to €11 billion to the very ESM fund which the Government claims we will be unable to access?

I urge the Tánaiste to make the momentous announcement we did not hear from Deputy Ó Cuív the other day and abandon this discredited and doomed treaty. Will he support the demands for real growth and a jobs strategy in Europe rather than continue his commitment to the sinking ship of the fiscal austerity treaty?

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