Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Many Deputies will have received today letters and emails from distressed IBRC workers. Last week, 850 bank workers were made redundant overnight. They received no notice, no consultation and no meetings with their unions. In fact, as one worker who emailed me said, he found out through the media. Bank employees did not cause this scandal and they are as much the victims of the greed of those at the top of Anglo and Irish Nationwide as anyone else. They did not engage in reckless spending or illegal or criminal actions. Those matters are the responsibility of the top bankers and those who were supposed to be regulating the system.

In taking the action to liquidate IBRC, the Government has a responsibility to treat these workers fairly and squarely. At minimum, the workers should be included in the transfer of undertakings to NAMA or continue to work for the liquidator. Agreed severance terms should be fully honoured. One worker pointed out to me that while he was aware that IBRC's future was limited and that as the loans were paid off the company would gradually wind down until it ceased to exist, he had made his career choice on the basis of the knowledge that a strategic plan had been agreed between the board of IBRC and the Department of Finance which not only provided guidance on the timeframe for the winding down but offered him an assurance that when his time came to leave the company, he would exit on agreed severance terms. The Government has a moral obligation to those workers to ensure there is a recognised transfer of undertakings or that agreed severances are fully honoured. Statutory redundancy would mean a halving of those agreed terms.

It amazes me that contractual issues or so-called reasonable expectations apply only to the well-heeled people who are responsible for this scandal. Despite all the spin, the reality is that the colossal debt of the €64 billion bank bailout - not counting the €35 billion bailout for NAMA - has been transferred squarely but not fairly onto the shoulders of Irish citizens. To claim that this is a good deal is a travesty of truth and of justice. It is akin to paying a debt one does not owe simply because one is allowed to pay it off over a long period of time. Who would ever agree to that? It is only those with a loose grip on reality who can call it a good deal or even the best deal that could be got in the circumstances. The real cost of the deal cannot be measured through the best estimates of floating rates or the effect over time of inflation on the principal sum. It cannot even be measured in terms of euro or billions of euro. It is an insult to talk about this deal in terms of the Irish people gaining a €20 billion bonus over its lifetime. The real cost must be measured in terms of the effect on the lives of ordinary people. It must be measured in terms of the despair of those who cannot find gainful, useful employment. It must be measured in terms of the despair of families whose children are exported at post-Famine levels every day of the week.

The bank bailout was funded with €20 billion or 80% of the total of the National Pensions Reserve Fund which has now gone out of the country to bail out speculators who incurred bad debts. Of that money, €15 billion properly invested in a job creation and infrastructural development programme could have transformed the unemployment situation. It could have ended the despair for hundreds of thousands of people and their families. Another €12 billion of the bailout funding came directly from the Exchequer. It amounts to 50% of the €25 billion taken out of our economy over the last six austerity budgets. Apart from deflating the domestic economy, austerity has involved cuts in health and other front-line services, education, social services and welfare which have been deliberately aimed at the most disadvantaged. To see Labour Party Ministers enter the Dáil last week with smug self-satisfaction written all over their faces on the basis of this deal was possibly the most sickening sight I have seen for a long time. What a way to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of 1913 not just to participate in a sell-out of ordinary people to beat all sell-outs but to celebrate and claim it was some sort of victory.

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