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

This is a chaotic and grotesque way to run a State by any standards. It is symbolic, however, of the anarchy by which the financial markets operate and symbolic of the dictatorship of those financial markets, in front of which Governments all over Europe, most notably the Irish Government, prostrate themselves to do their bidding while bleeding working class people to bail out their system. My first thoughts are with the 800 workers, most of whom are ordinary working people, in this bank who are to be summarily and brutally sacked from their jobs tomorrow morning if the legislation goes through, and who are dependent on NAMA as to whether they will be rehired. The transfer of undertakings does not apply so they can find themselves severely disadvantaged. They are being treated as pawns in this fiasco of high finance.

This does not in any way cancel the disastrous private debts undertaken by Fine Gael and the Labour Party, following their predecessors in Fianna Fáil, and placed on the shoulders of the Irish people as a result of the disaster that was Anglo Irish Bank and its speculation. Section 17 of the Bill makes clear in setting out the scenario whereby this Government will continue to honour the incredible debts that have been placed on our people, private gambling debts for which we have no responsibility.

The financial establishment of European capitalism is dictating everywhere that working people, the poor and unemployed, shall be bled through austerity to meet the bad gambling debts of the financial system. The European financial market system is a broken system, utterly dysfunctional and parasitic on society. Governments, including this Government, at the behest of these markets, are breaking society through savage austerity and crushing with economic misery tens of millions of people. This Bill is part of the whole rotten infrastructure and architecture of that market system and it should be roundly rejected. It is past time the working people of Europe, the poor and the pensioners, rose up to bring down this system to have a financial system that is democratically owned and controlled in the interests of the majority instead of holding literally trillions of uninvested profits for big business while 25 million Europeans languish in unemployment. That is the alternative to the charade we are being forced to hear tonight.

Is náireach agus is tubaisteach an tslí é seo chun tír a riar. Gearrfar 800 oibrigh óna gcuid post maidin amárach de bharr na reachtaíochta seo, gan chearta ar bith ach ag brath ar NAMA más rud go gcoinneoidh siad a bpost. Ní laghdaíonn an Bille seo oiread is euro de na fiacha tubaisteacha ó Bhanc Angla-Éireannach atá tógtha ag an Rialtas seo agus an Rialtas roimhe. Caithfear an córas seo a bhriseadh agus córas eile a chur ina áit a bheith faoi riarachán, stiúradh agus úinéireacht tromlach na ndaoine. Sa tslí sin, is féidir linn an córas lofa seo a chur ar ceal agus córas i bhfad níos fearr a chur ina áit.

See this speech in context