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

I apologise for not being able to stay for the entire debate but we are dealing with the Finance (No. 2) Bill 2013 in the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Finance and I have to be there to deal with it. That is a Bill where many of the disastrous consequences of taking on board an odious debt that does not belong to the ordinary people of this country are felt. They have been felt in this year' budget, last year's budget and the budgets before then. Ordinary citizens will be hit yet again with the consequences of a decision by both the last Government, and now tragically this Government, to continue to ask us, the ordinary people, to pay off debts that are not our debts to protect the financial and banking elites of Europe and the world.

This motion was inspired by the people of Ballyhea and Charleville and other people around the country. They are ordinary people who were not politically active or aligned or who are not ideological, as the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd, might often accuse me of being. They are just ordinary people who are sickened at the thought that our country has been beggared and that vast numbers of our citizens have been beggared as a result of a decision to use our resources and essentially sacrifice our economy to pay off the gambling debts of bankers and bondholders. Those people have marched week after week and again and again - their numbers growing across the country - because they cannot believe that the Government will not even ask that this debt be written down. Some of us believe the Government should tell those concerned to go to hell and not pay it.

A total of €9.1 billion will be paid in interest next year. That is the same as the education budget. That is what we are paying on this odious debt. Imagine what €9.1 billion would do for investment in health, education, infrastructure and jobs. Imagine how far it would go in preventing the outflow of tens of thousands of our young people, in getting people left to rot on the dole back to work and in alleviating the needless and cruel suffering imposed on the elderly, chronically sick, young people and families who have just lost loved ones. All of these groups are victims of what the Government is doing in this year's budget not to mention the litany of other vulnerable groups that have been victims of previous budgets.

It does not end there despite all the fantasy about exiting the bailout. As a result of this odious debt that is not our debt, we will be in a vice grip controlled by the troika and financial markets for at least a decade, if not 20 years, as we are forced to pay down that debt in a scheme that has been set out, that is absolutely rigid and that demands that we pay billions in interest and capital payments on a debt that is not our debt. Every cent that is going out is money that should be going into our economy, citizens, infrastructure and jobs. It all leads back to the debt.

The people of Ballyhea and Charleville are simply asking for the Government to just ask questions about this. It is bad enough that before the election, when in opposition, its members used all the rhetoric of "not a red cent" and so on. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, said it was "morally indefensible" that the debts of these financial institutions should be loaded on the back of ordinary citizens - all that tough talk that people believed when it voted for the Government. If it will not get tough could it not at least ask Angela Merkel? The ECB says it does not do monetary financing but it did not mind monetarily financing the bubble. It monetarily financed the bubble. It used the periphery economies as a casino to gamble and find cheap profits when the bubble was up but when it comes to actually giving some protection or bailout to ordinary people, it says it does not do monetary financing. That is rubbish.

It is one law for some and one law for others because debt write-down is being done for some people as I have said again and again. Let us talk about the richest person in this country - Mr. Denis O'Brien, sorry to mention names. A total of €110 million has been written off in respect of a company in which he takes a controlling interest which then gets the contract to install water meters. Another company in which he has a stake, Independent News & Media, gets over €100 million written off. People who are saddled with mortgage debt cannot get a write-down and we cannot get a write-down on the public debt because the ECB does not do monetary financing but it seems we can monetarily finance the richest people in the country. It is sickening.

All the people of Ballyhea are asking for - I would ask for a lot more - is for the Government to ask that we do not have to pay off the debt incurred because of one bank, Anglo Irish Bank, which is a zombie, dead, casino bank. We have no interest in protecting or bailing it out and it would go a long way towards alleviating the burden that has been imposed on the people of this country.

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