Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In the nearly four years I have sat in this Dáil, the majority of our debates have related in some way to the financial crisis, including the collapse of the banking system. Whatever we learn from the programme of which we, along with our European neighbours, are part, we must ensure the mistakes of the last seven or eight years are never repeated. Sometimes we wrongly speak as if every country in the EU is in the midst of a financial crisis. That is not the case, although some countries are in more trouble than others. In Greece, the situation for working class people is dire. Nurses, doctors and other professionals work five days per week for three days of pay. If that is not a crisis, I do not know what is. Athens has 140 soup kitchens. Working class people clearly have a problem if there are that many soup kitchens in Greece's capital city.

I hope the new regime in Greece works. The previous Government did its best and much of the criticism against the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, which dominated that Administration, was unfair. There are distinctive differences between the crises in Greece and in Ireland. Much of the debate in Greece was about public services, a subject that is close to my heart. It was estimated two years ago that almost 40% of professionals in Greece paid no tax whatsoever. Any country which wants public services and control of its finances needs a proper tax system. We have our own problems with tax evasion but the situation in Greece is a large part of the reason for its current problems. I was delighted to hear that the new regime, in a common sense decision, appointed a new Minister for tax evasion or some similar remit. That is an illustration of how bad things are for Greece. Those of us who have friends in or connections with the country are aware of other ways in which things have been sliding.

We may have gotten carried away building houses and flogging them to our next door neighbours but Greece's problems were of a different nature. Greeks have very little personal debt, whereas our crowd ran away with it in terms of buying four-by-fours. If one drove along the M50 in 2007 or 2008 one would think we were about to invade Iraq, such were the number of Jeeps on the road. However, one does not see as many Jeeps now. That is part of the fallout. I hope all of use can resolve our debt problems but we should not make our neighbouring citizens, including the Greeks, believe there is some sort of magic formula that will wipe away all of their debts. That would be misleading. I am not opposed to debt relief, however, and I believe that will be the eventual outcome. The majority of Members in this Chamber voted for the bank guarantee, which led to the first bailout. A price had to be paid for voting for a bank guarantee, particularly in terms of what was given to Anglo Irish Bank. That is a subject for a different debate, however. In this jurisdiction, we have carried out a programme. I do not like using the word "austerity". It is a very bourgeois word. When I was growing up we just used the word "hardship". The people in most working class estates do not use the word "austerity". I am aware it is cool for the career socialists to speak about austerity but it is an awful word. Hardship is much better, and people like Dickens used it. I do not know how the word "austerity" crept in but it did not come from the labour movement.

The most important lesson we can learn from what happened to certain countries in Europe is the need for regulation. Uncontrolled capitalism will lead some people to misery. We saw what happened here when it got carried away. Similarly in Greece, there was very little control over the banking sector and other aspects of the economy.

If one looks more clinically at what happened in Greece, it was of course the poorest who suffered most as happens in every country. They are the ones going to the soup kitchens and on the dole queues. It is extraordinary that the middle classes were able to shift their savings out of the country. I saw in a newspaper yesterday that in excess of €2.4 billion was moved. One will never beat the middle class or the upper class who always shift their money. The rest are left behind to go to the soup kitchens.

If we learn nothing else from this, we must acknowledge the need for regulation. There were people in this House not too many years ago who opposed any sort of regulation. I argued with people that if we had regulation, Anglo would not have done what it did and the retail banks would of course not have been giving out 100% mortgages to 20 year olds or loans to buy cars and 4x4 vehicles.

To return to my central point, I hope Greece and others get relief from this thing, but there is no easy way out. It is dishonest to try to make people believe otherwise. What Member of this Parliament is going to get up and say we should write off the €350 million Ireland allocated to Greece? I have not heard it yet and am not going to either. Regulation is the thing. If we leave at the end of this Parliament with proper regulation of banks and other institutions, we will have done something useful as legislators.

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