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

The Acting Chairman should not worry. I will not take as long as Deputy Martin did.

The development of the banking union and supervision of the banks by the ECB is being presented as a sort of panacea to which we should look forward. Why is that being presented as some sort of positive development when the ECB, by any reasonable assessment of what has gone on, has an enormous responsibility for the failure of the banking system and the financial system in Europe? Many of its decisions have worsened that situation and its priorities seem to be entirely at odds with the concerns of ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens and their public representatives, at least at a public level, are saying that we need jobs economic growth and a path out of recession. The ECB's priorities are none of those things. They are about book-balancing, profit-maximisation for the banks, and insisting that public authorities should not interfere with banks when we need more interference judging by what has happened and is happening. Why is this being presented as some sort of positive development and what assurances can the Tánaiste give us that the ECB having this level of power over in the banking system will improve the situation in any way?

Approximately two weeks prior to the latest Council meeting, the biggest general strike in European history, if not in world history, took place. Much as the Government likes to blame me and certain people on the left for protest, it cannot blame this one on us. This was an unprecedented, co-ordinated, European-wide mobilisation of working people, of the less well-off of their civil society and trade union organisations saying this was not working for them. It is not dealing with unemployment or producing economic growth, but is impoverishing people and they want an end to these policies.

See this speech in context