Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin has pointed out many times that the creation of a single currency was for many an ideological and political act entered into without sufficient economic or social consideration. The euro was never designed to serve and benefit the peoples of Europe. There was no popular demand for a single currency. It was a project of the few for the few. We are of the view that the euro is seriously flawed in both its fiscal design and the political economy which underpins it, as well as its institutional structures. For example, Ireland, like other countries, is essentially a member of a currency system over which it has no monetary control. In a nutshell, this means that as a nation state, we lack fiscal autonomy. We cannot devalue or inflate our own currency, while the euro has no lender of last resort. Even worse, it was cheap credit from the ECB that facilitated reckless banking and fuelled the gigantic property bubble that brought the country to its knees. All of these factors contributed to the current crisis and are a serious concern for Sinn Féin, particularly on issues of sovereignty and economic independence. However, we need to keep in mind that while the euro was undoubtedly a factor in the crisis, it was not the sole cause. Every day we are reminded of the appalling hardships and worry which a significant section of the people have to endure with unemployment, poverty, an inability to keep up with mortgage repayments, personal indebtedness, issues around access to decent health care, access to housing, fuel poverty and, more recently, the appalling reality of food poverty, all of which are coupled with a profound and deep mistrust of politics, politicians and the political system in general.

This is the legacy of years of Fianna Fáil misrule, clientelism, corruption and indifference. We now find ourselves, as a nation, part of a monetary system that is underpinned by a neoliberal political economy which operates in the almost sole interest of advanced capitalist accumulation and Germany. Hence, we see the socialisation of private debt and the politics of austerity that is destroying the social fabric of Europe. Nonetheless, Sinn Féin believes it is naive to suggest Ireland withdraw from the euro and go it alone at this stage. We are far too entwined and embedded within the European and global financial systems for such a move; rather, we are of the view that a Europe with an economically stable euro at its core is the best hope for kick-starting economic recovery in Ireland and across the eurozone in the years ahead. This means that Europe’s political elite must immediately address the democratic deficit that lies at the heart of the EU project. There must also be an end to the destructive and counterproductive politics of austerity, while an investment programme on the scale of the Marshall Plan and a social insurance fund to assist struggling countries should be introduced. The Eurogroup must follow through on its commitment to separate sovereign debt from private banking debt. This, as we know only too well, did not happen in the recent Cypriot case. In keeping with the laws of the free market, bondholders and investors must bear the brunt of investments that fail. It is the duty of the State to protect depositors as far as possible.

At the wider European level and at the level of the nation state, there is a profound and urgent need to address inequality in wealth and income with the concept of redistribution to become embedded in and central to all economy policy. It is important that the politically deliberate rejection of egalitarianism is challenged and that we begin to seriously conceive of and work towards a European Union and an Ireland without poverty. What rich people call the problem of poverty, poor people call, with equal justification, the problem of riches. We have a duty to build a fairer and more egalitarian Europe, a Europe that will operate in the interest of all its people, not an elite class of financiers and political statesmen. That is the challenge ahead. Leaving the euro tomorrow would not make that challenge any easier.

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