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

We are discussing the notorious blanket guarantee that Fianna Fáil gave to the banks, the major corporate donors, the bondholders and the speculators who helped to cause the crash in our economy and the wider European economy.

Fianna Fáil initiated it and Fine Gael at the time also backed this guarantee. Whatever qualifications they may have put on it, when it came to it, just like the European political establishment, they prioritised the interests of the very institutions, speculators and financiers who had caused the crisis. They rushed in to provide an emergency guarantee to these gangsters, frankly, who had caused the crisis.

The Government is claiming success in that we are moving towards the winding down of this guarantee. It claims this is being enabled because the banks are now able to access money on the international markets. Whatever small bit of stability might be returning to the famous markets, the Government should not count its chickens on that stability being retained over the medium to long term, particularly considering the net effect of the policy of bailing out the banks and paying for it with an austerity that is crippling economic growth across Europe. At some point the markets will recognise the significant contradiction. I would confidently, but regretfully, predict that the panic will return at some point when the extremely damaging downward spiral caused as a result of the austerity measures imposed on the European economy, begins to kick in and to make its way into the core of the European economy. This is beginning to happen. Even in so far as the Government is claiming success in its efforts to move towards the winding down of this guarantee, we should remember that this so-called success has only been made possible because these banks have been stuffed with the cash of ordinary people. The previous Government and this Government, under the diktat of the ECB, said that they would do whatever is necessary to protect the banks; it is their top priority. Everything will revolve around restoring the banks to so-called normality, bringing them back to profitability, bringing them back to where they were before the crisis began. I find this to be a bizarre aspiration, that we are going to nurse them back to the situation they were in before all this mess started and that we think that is the recipe for sustainable economic and financial development over the long term. This shows a complete failure to understand what caused the crisis in the first place. It is not just a case of studying past history because we will be counting the cost when the crisis hits again, as it surely will.

The cost being paid by Irish citizens for returning the banks to so-called normality is the €64 billion we have had to borrow - for which we will be paying interest for many years to come - in order to stuff these banks with cash and restore the confidence of the all powerful markets. The cost is an unsustainable debt burden taken off the backs of the private banks, the for-profit banks, and unloaded onto the backs of the Irish people. If people are made suffer to the extent that we are making them suffer, the banks will be nursed back to health but at what cost for ordinary people. It is a cost we will be counting for decades, possibly. We are counting this cost now because of an unsustainable debt burden. The cost next year will be €9.1 billion in debt interest. The spectre of the deficit is constantly raised by the Government. We are warned that the deficit is €15 billion which we must cover. We are told that anyone who criticises the Government's policies is living in Cloud Cuckoo land. I ask the Government please to state the qualification that €9 billion of that deficit is in debt interest-----

See this speech in context