Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

All the Government contributors to this debate on the Irish economy over the past two days predicated their contributions on the claim that current policies are working, that the Irish economy is turning the corner, and that we will overcome this economic crisis within a few years. That is manifestly false on even the most cursory examination of the key indicators for the Irish economy. If the economy is turning the corner, why were 14,000 fewer people employed in quarter 3 of this year than in quarter 2? Why is gross domestic product crawling ahead at a possible 0.7% this year? Why are 440,000, or 14.8%, of our people unemployed or under-employed? Why was emigration, in the year up to the end of April 2012, at a level of 87,100? One would have to go back to the 1800s to find a comparable level.

The reality is that far from succeeding, the policy of austerity is causing economic disaster on a huge scale. It is destroying the domestic economy and causing huge suffering on a human level for hundreds of thousands of our people. That is inevitable because in the past five years we have seen an unimaginable transfusion of resources from the working class of this country to the bondholders, the speculators and the bankers in the financial markets of Europe and further afield. We have seen, and it is ongoing, a criminal transfer of massive wealth from ordinary people to the capitalist financiers throughout Europe and on a world basis much greater than if we were in a war time period except those who are sucking up those resources out of the pockets of the working class of this country do not need an army of occupation. The political establishment, currently Fine Gael and Labour and previously Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, is managing their affairs and is their agent in this State.

We have a media, itself part of the market system, owned by multimillionaires and billionaires, major capitalists who despite the criticisms they will make occasionally of the Government fundamentally justify and defend this massive transfer of wealth on the basis that there is no alternative except to bend the knee to the dictatorship of the financial markets and that the working class must pay, abusing those who put an alternative viewpoint, especially from a Socialist perspective.

We have broadcasters including, unfortunately and shamefully, the main public broadcaster, RTE, which never question in any fundamental way the morality of a financial dictatorship of the markets that bleed the ordinary working people, the unemployed, the pensioners and the youth of our country to save the capitalist financial system within Europe and further afield. It is a media which refused to contemplate even a partial change that would see an increased demand on the wealthy elite in this country or on major corporations. It refuses to contemplate even a modest raise in corporation tax and the amount of tax big business pays.

Last year in an amendment to a Private Members’ motion, I pointed out that based on 2008 figures for corporation tax, for every 1% increase there would be an extra €500 million going into public funds. This year the equivalent would be approximately €390 million per year. We could have substantial extra resources by further taxes on big business and on wealth if there were a Government that would even contemplate or enact such an increase. That is prohibited, however, because the agenda of this Government and of the media is to protect the position and profits of big business even as our people suffer. We would not even have to go as far as the Danish economy or others which have 25% and 30% levels of corporation tax to achieve substantial increases.

In the face of this crisis and unprecedented attack on the living standards and livelihoods of working class people, we have a trade union leadership which, unfortunately, for all practical purposes has gone into hiding, resolutely refusing to lead any kind of struggle for a change of policy in the interests of working people. We need fundamental alternatives. We need to attack the austerity agenda and end it. We need massive investment, particularly in public infrastructure. If the taxes I outlined on wealth and corporations were levied, there would be substantial extra resources for significant national programmes of public works and investment such as, for example, the replacement of leaking water mains.

Instead, we have massive cuts in public capital expenditure. All the evidence from the financial press points out that all across Europe big business and capitalist enterprises are sitting on unprecedented amounts of uninvested profits. The ratio of investment to gross domestic product, GDP, in Europe is at a 60-year low. Capital refuses to invest because profits are not sufficiently high while 25 million people are unemployed across the European Union. We need a massive struggle by the organised working class and labour movement to change this. We need massive emergency taxation on these trillions of uninvested profits to channel them into major public infrastructural and job creation enterprises. We must realise capitalism is now a sick system and getting increasingly sicker, incapable of meeting even the basic needs of our society and people. A socialist transformation of society is now needed that would take the major wealth from the hands of a tiny elite and corporate sector and invest it for the common welfare and benefit of society. Instead of the major banks and financial market institutions such as Goldman Sachs being a law on to themselves and sucking up resources of society for private corporate gain, they must be taken into public ownership and democratic control. Only on that basis can we remake the broken economies of Ireland and Europe which have been destroyed by greed, gambling as well as the rash of privatisations and deregulation over the past 20 years. This is the only solution to this crisis and the only future for the ordinary people of Europe and this country.

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