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

As the Minister of State mentioned, we have discussed much of this matter. However, I wish to underline a point in challenging the notion that this Bill will bring stability, as the Title suggests. I want to cut through the myth that the money in question is, for the most part, being invested in the Greek economy to make it function and to provide funding for services and citizens. This is not the fact. Some €29 billion of the amount involved will be used for bank recapitalisation. Yet again, we are bailing out the banks, not the Greek people. Just as in our case, the majority of our loans were for the banks. We did not take them on because we were spending too much, though. Like Greece, we bailed out our banks so that they could bail out German and French banks. The cost of the loans has been loaded onto the people, who must make significant interest payments, digging them deeper into a hole.

The legislation before us should be called the "Control a Country Through the Use of Debt Bill". That is what it is about. Debt is control. If one can force a country into a position of indebtedness, one controls its economy. One can then asset strip that economy. This is what is happening in Greece and is beginning to happen in Ireland. Demands are being placed on us to sell our State assets. We have already gone a long way down the road of smashing up public services. We are doing what others want us to do, that being, to open our economy so that they can control it and buy our assets and markets at fire sale prices. This Bill is not about stability. It most certainly is not about bailing out the ordinary Greek people who have been crippled by the situation.

The main opposition party in Greece and the many left-wing parties that oppose this Bill may well be in government soon. They do not consider it a bailout of the Greek people. Just in case there is any suggestion that those of us who oppose the Bill do not want to help the Greek people, I wish to say that it is precisely because we want to help them that we are opposing it. We want to stand in solidarity with the Greek people, who know that this is a debt noose around their necks.

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