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

I refer to the outrageous decision of the ECB not to answer questions at the banking inquiry. The inquiry is a political stunt that was likely to produce nothing from the outset but now it is a complete dead letter with one of the key players in the entire debacle that has bankrupted the country and driven Europe into crisis refusing to answer questions about its role and the pathetic failure of the State, which knows how important it is that this evidence be given, to demand of Europe that the institution make itself accountable.

To add to Deputy Murphy's comments, the investment programme is a pyramid scheme subsidised and guaranteed by the ordinary working people, taxpayers and citizens of Europe and it is the door into the privatisation of public infrastructure, services and utilities across the Union. What we are doing is a scandal. There is an amazing parallel between the off balance financing and manoeuvres to set up Irish Water and charge people for the consumption of water, which the Government is pursuing, and the overall project for so-called investment in Europe, which is precisely predicated on the same off balance sheet private sector financing guarantied by the state. The profits go to the private sector and all the risk goes to the citizens if everything goes belly up. It means that the financiers will call the shots demanding user charges and dictating the nature and character of investment leading to the privatisation of infrastructure and services across the country followed no doubt by demands for more productivity, wage cuts and so on for those working in those services and on the infrastructure. The programme pays lip service to public investment whereas in reality it is the vehicle through which the privatisation of the European economy will be advanced and the Government is playing a vanguard role along with Mr. Juncker in pursuing this neoliberal strategy, which had such disastrous consequences for the European economy only a few short years ago.

Of course, the other side of this coin which points to the alternative is the issue of corporate tax. Again, the Irish Government is on the wrong side of the ideological and political conflict about how one finances real investment in the real economy because we are busy developing knowledge boxes and giving multinationals a four or five-year lead-in so they do not have to pay any tax but it is their profits not just in this country but across Europe that should be taxed in order to finance the infrastructure and public investment programmes that we need. Let us not forget that regardless of whether it is Irish Water or in Europe, it is the big industries and multinationals who use the most. They are the biggest users of our public infrastructure and instead of getting them to contribute towards that infrastructure, those services and that investment by taxing them directly and funding public programmes, we borrow money off them, become indebted to them and essentially become subjects of the big multinationals.

It is a fantastic step forward that today the European Court of Justice, ECJ, has de-listed Hamas from the list of terrorist organisations - apparently on a technicality. This recognition is long overdue. Whatever we may think about Hamas, it is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In order for there to be any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we must engage and talk to Hamas. It is a pity it took the ECJ to do it rather than the political leadership of this country and other countries in Europe but I hope there will be follow-through on it.

I am glad to see that Fianna Fáil has now endorsed the call I have been making for the past month in this House for us to do the same with the PKK in respect of what is happening in Syria. It is not good enough to cry crocodile tears for the disaster that has been inflicted by the Assad regime and ISIS on the people of Syria without giving endorsement and legitimacy to the PKK which is leading the fight on the ground against Assad and ISIS and which is protecting the Kurdish people in Kobane and other places in northern Syria. Can we have movement from the Government now that we have started to do the right thing in terms of representatives of the Palestinian people? Can we do the same for the legitimate representatives of the Kurdish people?

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