Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Murphy for bringing forward this timely motion.

The election of Syriza in Greece in the past week was a victory for progressive politics in Greece and all of Europe. It is very likely that it will be followed by the election of Podemos in Spain. We in Ireland should be delighted with the potential these election results present to us. The election of Syriza indicates that the citizens of Greece have had enough of the policies imposed on them by the troika which have socialised the debts of the banking sector and made citizens liable for them, forcing massive austerity across the board.

The proposal made by Syriza of a European debt conference should be embraced by the Dáil and the Government. Even though we have weathered the troika programme, I must ask: at what cost? It has led to massive unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, huge levels of emigration and increases in deprivation and poverty rates. While the housing crisis may not be directly attributable to the troika and the bailout programme, our ability to respond to it is restricted by the amount of debt we are carrying and the interest payments we are required to make annually.

The Syriza proposal is for a European debt conference to be called, to include all eurozone countries. There is a precedent - the debt conference held in the 1950s that led to the Marshall plan which included a halving of Germany's debt and reductions in the debts of other European countries because of the burden imposed by the war. The Syriza proposal is to reduce the national debts of all eurozone countries to 50% of GDP. This would be achieved by the ECB buying the sovereign debts of members. This would remove approximately €4 trillion of debt and place it on the balance sheet of the ECB. It would not be a debt write-off, nor would it be a default. The bonds held by the ECB would be bought back by member states when the level of the debt reached 20% of a country's GDP. For each country the time within which this would be achieved would be different. In our case it could be as far out as 2053 or 2060.

This proposal would not involve a fiscal transfer from one eurozone country to another, which is illegal under the Lisbon treaty, and would not constitute a bailout. The balance sheet of the ECB could sustain this level of debt and the losses to it for the first number of years would be manageable, at approximately €60 billion per year. This sounds like a huge amount of money, but measured against the ECB balance sheet it is relatively small. This move would have a stimulus effect on the entire eurozone economy and help to head off the deflationary problems in the eurozone.

What this would mean for us as a nation is that our debt repayments would be reduced by up to €3.7 billion per year, moneys that could be used to address the housing crisis and invest in the economy. Considering the announcement made by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport today, in which he indicated a cut of €40 million since 2014 in the fund for local and European Union-funded roads, we see the potential this investment could have in this area and services such as child care.

Investing in child-care provision and creating a proper functioning affordable child-care sector would mean that citizens could continue in work without having the burden of the most expensive child care in Europe. It would also allow the development of a proper career path and living wage for child-care workers.

We could also invest in providing fibre broadband for each household in the country. That is achievable if there is the vision to provide it. The stimulus of providing real broadband would free up huge potential for people outside the major urban areas to create jobs for themselves.

The Western Development Commission in 2011 published a report that estimated that up to 18,000 jobs could be created in the creative industries in the north west alone simply by improving access to the Internet and e-commerce. Imagine the potential that could be unleashed with this kind of stimulus. These are just some of the possibilities of what we could do after the debt conference proposal.

To make it a reality requires an Irish government to have the vision to embrace it and see the potential in it. Unfortunately, the statements coming from the Government have attempted to pour cold water on the idea. It is interesting that the initial response to the proposals was not to rule it out entirely, but then the IMF and the troika came to town for the review conference a few weeks ago and the mood changed. Was it that the IMF told the Government to get back on message and toe the line? It certainly seems like it.

Things are changing within Europe and the Government needs to see what is happening. The debt conference proposal is not only to benefit Greece, it is a proposal that benefits the entire eurozone and, along with Greece and probably Spain, we should champion it. Who would have more credibility in selling this idea than a country like Ireland which did so much to shoulder the burden of the eurozone crisis, paying 43% of the entire banking bailout of the eurozone?

The Government could be helping our citizens by supporting a proposal that benefits everyone in Europe and its credentials as good Europeans would be intact. I am urging the Minister to accept this motion, not to move the mealy-mouthed amendment he has tabled and to embrace a debt conference that offers a solution once and for all to the crisis that still goes on and is still impacting on all our citizens.

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