Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate the point made by other colleagues that this debate is no substitute for the debate that should have taken place last week before the passing of the Bill to dissolve IBRC. It was an incredibly arrogant and undemocratic tone that Fine Gael and Labour took when they rammed the Bill through the House before people had the chance to digest even the broader details and consider the consequences. Government TDs heckled and laughed and were drunk on hysteria that at long last they had got something tangible. They had little concern for debating it or even considering its implications, jubilant with the idea that they could sell this pup to the Irish people.

This Government trots out many mistruths on a regular basis to make itself sound successful or to make those who oppose it sound cynical or wrong, but one mistruth which has been pedalled since last week cannot be brushed off as a desperate attempt to deflect. I speak of the claim that the so-called deal on the extension of the debt repayment is a fairer deal. We cannot have fairer unfairness. That is the premise on which the Irish people are being saddled with this debt. It is unfair, and the answer is not to suck it up and say, "Life is not fair" because it is morally wrong and it is not in the interest of the people of Ireland or Europe.

That mistruth goes to the heart of what is wrong with this Government and tells us how it has become Fianna Fáil mark 2. Now they are on the Government benches. When the risk-taking of the European banking sector came back to haunt them, Ireland was asked to bear the brunt, and the good little boys and girls of Europe happily sacrificed the people of Ireland on the altar of European capitalism.

We saved the European banking sector and our repayment was €28 billion in cuts over the past five years. That is nearly two health services' worth of cuts for our trouble. The average Irish citizen has been saddled with a debt of almost €9,000 each, well in excess of the rest of Europe. The banking crisis or, more important, how we allowed it to be handled, ended up costing us approximately €40 billion, which is 25% of our GDP and nearly ten times that of the nearest country in those terms. We have been saddled with all that, and all the cuts, taxes and austerity that came with it. We have been insulted and treated as if we had done something extraordinarily wrong by comparison with the rest of Europe.

Every second night for weeks RTE ran "vox pops" of German people saying that the Irish must pay their way and that they were sick of bankrolling us. We have been treated as pariahs who needed to be taught a lesson and instead of calling a halt to that and saying, "No more", after Fianna Fáil put out the welcome mat Fine Gael and Labour have given the European Central Bank the whole place to do with it as it pleases. Instead of saying, as thousands did last weekend, that this is not our debt and we should not be made to pay it, we have said we will pay every cent and will only ask for crumbs to try to fool our people, along with us.

Today, after this so-called deal, the Irish people still owe everything they owed from the promissory note but now with the added pleasure of owing interest, which is uncertain, and we will likely see that in the end the debt repayment will be doubled.

It is likely I will not be around to see the day Ireland is free of this debt but this Government has copperfastened it in that all our children will be paying for it for many years to come. As Brian Lucey wrote of this deal, it is Frankfurt's way, all the way. As he said, the Government has "... irrevocably linked the Anglo debt to the state". I would like to believe that it is not irrevocable and that we can change things, but the intent of the Government's move has been to copperfasten the debt and make it sovereign.

This deal may be a seismic shift, as the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, prophesised last June but it is not a massive breakthrough for the Irish people. It is certainly a good deal for the ECB whose members must be laughing among themselves that our Government is celebrating that we now have entered into a situation where a debt we should be not be paying is now guaranteed not to be written down and which is now a wholly sovereign debt. It is nothing short of shameful, and Fine Gael and Labour are either fools or cynics to sell it as something beneficial or fair for the Irish people.

Our Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, made it clear from day one that we would not attempt to negotiate our debt, as he called it. At that time he stated that we will not be branded defaulters, and that we will honour our debt. Imagine a Government going in to negotiations and conceding the main argument that this is not our debt.

Fianna Gael and Labour were elected on the promise that they would negotiate a deal and burn bondholders. The only ones who have been burned are the Irish people and the generations to come. What will this mean, if anything, for the budgets of 2014, 2015 etc.? Will we see an easing of the austerity measures, and by how much?

Last weekend tens of thousands of people marched and the slogan at that march was, "This is not our debt". Many people realise the long-term repercussions for our people with which the Government has saddled us. The people are not being fooled. We will pay a heavy price down the road for short-term gains.

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