Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is quite extraordinary. We got this motion yesterday at 4.50 p.m. and amendments were to be in by 9.30 a.m. this morning. That was before we got to hear what the Minister had to say about the bailout exit. How are we supposed to make an informed response to this motion without actually hearing what the Minister has to say? That is ridiculous.

This is a bogus debate. It is an utter charade, a political trick played by a Government that specialises in pulling the wool over the eyes of the people. We are faced with a false choice which I, and others on this side of the House, reject utterly. We are being asked to make the choice of whether to stay in the frying pan of the troika’s austerity programme or jump into the fire of the international markets to become prey to the vultures, speculators and the bondholders who caused this mess in the first place. To suggest these options are valid and that opting for the latter is a victory for the country is wrong. To put it in simpler terms, the choice is either to borrow tens of billions of euro from the troika to pay off odious debts that belong to the banks but which the Minister will inflict on the backs of our citizens or to borrow tens of billions of euro to pay off odious debts from the very same bankers and bondholders whose debts they are. What a choice.

The issue is why we are paying off debts that are not ours. Why is it that next year we will pay €9 billion, the equivalent of the education budget, on interest on debts that are not ours? No matter which choice we make, we will be dictated to by the lenders. It is only because the Minister has agreed to take on these debts that these guys control us. They can dictate to us through the blackmail and bullying of the international markets which we have been subject to either in or out of the programme. If we choose not to go down that route, we will be subject to the surveillance, monitoring and diktat of the ECB, the IMF and troika which, in any event, dances to the tune of the international markets. This is a complete joke.

Meanwhile, our country is being beggared. This is the real meaning of the motion as the Minister well knows.

The real purpose of this motion is to try to deflect attention away from the vicious, cruel, heartless cuts that are being imposed on some of the most vulnerable people in our society, such as taking medical cards from people who are sick or old and taking social welfare payments from young people who are unemployed through no fault of their own. It is all very amusing in the cynical world that is Dáil Éireann, where everything is a game and a charade, played out for the cameras and the soundbites, presumably to give the Minister some satisfaction and a few laughs as he puts Fianna Fáil into a difficult position because of that party's view on precautionary credit lines, which is an equally opportunistic position and utterly bogus. They talk about it as though there were only two options: either to have conditions rammed down our throat or to become subject to the international markets. The Minister is trying to lure the public and the media into an utterly false debate, played out purely for the cameras. We reject that utterly.

When is the Government going to stand up to these vultures, whether they are the troika representatives of the financial markets or the financial markets themselves, and tell them that our society cannot take this any more and that we cannot afford to pay them €9.1 billion next year? Now that we are close to reaching a primary budget balance, we have the leverage to tell them that. The Minister no longer has the excuse that we have a massive deficit and that we are spending more than we are taking in. We can tell them to get lost, that we are not paying that money back, and see what they have to say to that. Instead, we are just getting down on our knees to be screwed one way or the other.

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