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

Just so those in the Visitors' Gallery are aware, every time a Deputy from the Technical Group gets up to speak, the Minister of State, Deputy Creighton, plays with her phone and talks to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. It is indicative of the contempt the Government has for the Opposition. The Visitors' Gallery, which is full right now, should understand that this is generally the approach of the Government. None the less, these problems will be resolved by ordinary people such as those in the gallery and in society. They will not be resolved by politicians in the club of the political establishment who failed us so miserably for the last four years.

I challenge the Government to tell us specifically how this deal will improve the lot of ordinary people. Is it just more PR spin, smoke and mirrors and an elaborate accountancy trick? One would not have much reason for hope when the first meaningful statement from a Government spokesman in the aftermath of all the declarations of the great breakthrough came from the Minister for Finance, who said it would make no difference whatsoever to the cuts and austerity that the Government plans to impose in the budget in December, a fact confirmed by the troika. While the troika members could not tell us what specific improvements in terms of employment, cuts and austerity the Irish people would see as a result of the deal, they were able to state that the cuts in incomes must continue, the privatisation agenda would continue and property taxes must be imposed. One wonders what all the hoo-ha is about.

In so far as there is any substance whatsoever to all the declarations of a breakthrough last week, it seems to revolve around the fact that perhaps the debts of the banks and the bailouts necessary to fill the hole in the banks will not be routed through the sovereign and that the ESM will directly bail out the banks. People should take note that the first and major priority of the European leaders remains unchanged, namely, to bail out the banks but to do so in a slightly different way.

The question is whether this new method of bailing out the banks will bring about an improvement for ordinary people. It may result in a reduction of our debt-to-GDP ratio, although that remains to be seen. However, we are going to pick up the tab at the other end through the ESM because it will now be the mechanism to bail out the banks and we, the citizens of this country and Europe, pay for the ESM. In our case it is now more likely that the Irish people will be on the hook for the full €11 billion or more to finance the ESM by virtue of the ESM treaty and that we will be called upon to bail out the European banks given that it is considered that there is in the region of a €2 trillion hole in Spanish and Italian banks alone and the ESM has only €500 billion of so-called firepower. That makes it almost certain that Irish citizens will just pay the bill in a different way.

The truth is that we will only have reason to celebrate when the Minister of State can tell us where the jobs are and how the 300,000 or 400,000 jobs we need to get our people back to work and to get the economy moving again will be created. When will the Government stop the imposition of brutal and unjust cuts on working people and vulnerable sectors of society? The Minister of State has made it absolutely clear that will continue. The policy is to prop up the banks, privatise everything and crush ordinary people with austerity. That is not a breakthrough and it is certainly nothing to celebrate.

See this speech in context