Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

This is not the debt of the people but a private debt which has been placed on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren. IBRC may be gone but the debt has not. It has also been turned into a €64 billion debt rather than a €35 billion debt. The Government claims it has saved significant amounts of money on this debt.

Going into the last general election, the Labour Party claimed it would look after the vulnerable and low and middle-income families during the Government's term. If billions will be saved in the deal, it is incumbent on the Labour Party to use the money to ensure low and middle-income families are supported and protected. However, the cuts to home help services have still not been reversed. During the course of the deal the Minister for Social Protection and deputy leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Joan Burton, issued a circular, No. 1/2/13, to community welfare officers to stop paying grants for religious ceremonies. In other words, it stops needy families getting a few euro in a grant when their children are making their First Holy Communion and Confirmation. Will the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, get the Minister for Social Protection to reverse that mean, nasty and shameful cut that affects needy families? There is significant poverty in the country. Up to 90,000 children are living in consistent poverty, while 232,000 are living in relative poverty. Up to 750,000 adults are at risk of poverty. While billions will be saved in the deal, not a single ha'penny of it will go to protect the vulnerable, as the Labour Party claimed it would do in the course of the last general election.

The Minister for Finance has made great play in comparing the deal to a home mortgage and an historic reduction in capital repayments through inflation. The lenders will be compensated for this inflationary effect by a vastly increased total interest bill paid by the home owner. However, there is a better analogy. The deal is like extending the period of a mortgage not on one's own home but on someone else's for which one does not have any liability.

From the point of view of the people, the liabilities of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society were never ours. This debt was wrongly placed on the shoulders of the people by the previous Government. By making this deal the Government has agreed that it is the debt of the people. It has sanctioned the betrayal of the previous Government - so much for the accusation of economic treason levelled by the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, against Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.

The Government did not seek a formal write-down of debt. Therefore, the outcome is that the debts of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation are now even more firmly nailed to State debt than heretofore. Where now are the calls of Fine Gael and the Labour Party for burden sharing? When are the calls for separating bank debt from sovereign debt? The deal may result in a short-term easing of repayments for the State but at the expense of future generations and anyway it is not our debt. The transfer of the debt of bondholders onto the shoulders of our children and grandchildren is shameful. This easing may not last long because the ECB has the sword of Damocles over the deal. It can direct the Central Bank of Ireland to float the bonds and place them in the private markets, in which the interest rate will not be 0.75% but 3% or more and represent a remarkable burden on the people. Naturally, the ECB will use this to ensure the Government will dance to the tune of austerity and continue the measures it has been pursuing since it came to power.

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