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

This is the mildest of motions. It merely asks the Government to talk to the European Central Bank, to negate the €28 billion debt with which that bank in connivance with two treacherous governments, this and the previous one, saddled the Irish people in order to bail out bankers and bondholders from the fruit of their greed-driven speculation in Irish property. Yet even this mild motion is too much for the Fine Gael-Labour coalition which places itself in perpetual prostration at the altar of the financial markets of European capitalism, the Government which allows the sharks who infest those financial markets to dictate how a country and a continent should be run, an economic dictatorship dictating to the supposedly democratically elected governments of this country and of Europe. Last February, the Government in rushing through legislation standing down the former Anglo Irish Bank did nothing more than saddle generations yet to be born with the private debts of the speculators in the financial markets. The fruits of bailing out these speculators are bitter without exception.

Bitter is the austerity agenda. Austerity is the weapon of choice to secure the transfusion of the lifeblood of our people, of the Greek, Spanish and Portuguese people, and of other peoples to the private hedge funds and international financial institutions.

The Government should listen to the voice of that most sober and conservative institution, the International Committee of the Red Cross. In a recent report, it outlined a damning indictment of this Government and all the governments of the EU establishment:

Five years ago it would have been unimaginable; so many millions of Europeans lining up for food in soup kitchens, receiving food parcels at home or being referred to social groceries (shops where they can buy food at highly reduced prices after being referred by social authorities). Former middle class citizens living in trailers, tents, railway stations or in shelters for the homeless, hesitating to go to the Red Cross Red Crescent and other organizations to ask for help.

The report says, "there are now more than 18 million people receiving EU-funded food aid, 43 million who do not get enough to eat each day and 120 million at risk of poverty in the countries covered by Eurostat". That shameful situation is a result of austerity and undertaking debts that are not of the people. Austerity is not a necessity. It is a policy choice to save European capitalism and its financial speculators from the chaos of their profit-driven, greed-driven system. Labour and Fine Gael stand with the speculators of that system and against the people.

I note the perseverance of the people of Ballyhea and the anger at the unjust burdens foisted on our people. A government of and for working class people in this country might ask the ECB to stand down the Anglo Irish Bank debts, but on inevitable refusal, it would simply tear up the unjust covenants and agreements that foisted that debt on our people and the incredible €8 billion to €9 billion per year in interest alone on that and the other debts that have been put on top of our people. Such a Government of working people would launch a European movement standing with the working class of Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries to take the financial markets, hedge funds and financial institutions into democratic public control and channel those funds for investment for our people for the creation of millions of jobs and, on that basis, begin to rebuild a society not on the basis of this failed, diseased system of European capitalism but on the basis of solidarity between peoples, genuine real democracy and socialism.

See this speech in context