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

The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2013 is a falsely named piece of legislation through and through. The public interest suggests the well-being of a majority in society and society in general. A regime of cuts to the income of low and middle-income workers and a worsening of their conditions is not in the public interest or in the interest of society. It damages society and increases the stress and difficulties of the workers concerned and it takes €1 billion out of the domestic economy over the next three years, further intensifying the downward spiral of this austerity-blighted domestic economy. This Bill is in the interests of the financial markets - the bondholders, the bankers and the troika who act in the interests of the financial capitalists of Europe.

It also is in the interests of the bailing out of the financial market system on the backs of working-class people.

The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill is a disgraceful blackmail measure to browbeat workers into accepting significant attacks on their incomes and conditions. The registration for the property tax, the home tax in reality, closed today, providing for another income cut also accompanied by threats and menaces. For many workers, the property tax amounts to a week's income. The public sector workers should take on both the property tax and these proposed cuts to their wages and conditions - hatched appropriately in this agreement in a place called Beggars Bush - beggaring the low and middle-income workers concerned. They should take on the property tax and mount a massive campaign of opposition, mobilisation and industrial action to halt this insane austerity and to force a change in Government policy towards investment, job creation and regeneration of the economy instead.

It was ironic to hear the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform criticise his Fianna Fáil predecessor and, he charged, for introducing similar measures unilaterally. While that is correct, have Members forgotten that over the past few months, the same Minister has been bullying and badgering the public sector workers concerned on a weekly basis? They have been told they have absolutely no choice or they would face worse. He has threatened them that unless they vote for the amputation of their right arms, the Government will cut them off anyway. This has been the tone of the Government and it is a disgraceful position for a Labour Party Minister to adopt. I reject this legislation and urge workers in the public sector, to be supported by private-sector workers, to reject it out of hand and to fight for an alternative.

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