Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Catherine Murphy for bringing forward this motion and I salute her for it.I congratulate the Greek finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, and his Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras. These are fine people. I met with Alexis Tsipras when he was in Dublin earlier in the summer.

Back in January 2012, before I was expelled from the Minister of State’s party, I visited Berlin with the finance committee under the then leadership of Deputy Alex White and the vice-chairman, Deputy Liam Twomey. Deputies Pearse Doherty, Richard Boyd Barrett and Michael McGrath also attended. At the time, as Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett will remember, I said there should be a London debt agreement for our country. How dare the European establishment push us around? They gave us €140 billion to pay off bondholders such as Pimco which should never have been repaid. Half of that debt by any measure was odious and should have been written off. Of course, there should be a debt conference.

Alexis Tsipras was here supporting us earlier in the summer. We should be over in Greece supporting him. This is a European solution. There are 20 million people without work in Europe, five times the population of this country. It is wrong there is no process of examining the situation and restructuring by mutualisation of between €2 trillion to €3 trillion of debt. Denis Staunton, deputy editor of The Irish Times, had an article two weeks ago before the Greek election on this. Ashoka Mody, Ajai Chopra, Carmen Reinhart and Joseph Stiglitz, all independent and authoritative economists, have said we have been essentially led by a gutless Government. They are correct. We owe it to the people. It is wrong people are suffering, that people are taking their lives, that families are breaking up and that children witness all this. Psychosis appearance in this society is at an all-time high. Psychosis appearance means a detachment from reality. I think the Taoiseach is suffering from it at the moment.

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