Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Greece is in a state of humanitarian and economic catastrophe. It is in that state because of the austerity imposed by the troika and implemented by New Democracy and PASOK. Wages have fallen by 37%, public sector employment by over 25% and pensions by almost 50%. The result is an explosion of homelessness, unemployment, suicide, poverty and misery for the Greek people, and an economy that has shrunk by almost a third.

The purpose of this austerity, like our own, was to bail out German and French banks. Of all of the so-called bailout funds that went into Greece, less than 10% has gone into the Greek economy. It is for that reason that the Greek debt truth committee, set up by the Greek Parliament, has found the debt to the troika to be illegal, illegitimate and odious. In response, Syriza was elected to tackle the humanitarian crisis, to end austerity and to demand a debt write-down. The response from the EU authorities has been to try to strangle at birth the hopes of a different Europe, of a Europe that would not be run for the millionaires but instead would be run for the millions. The democratic wishes of the Greek people, expressed in an election, have been casually tossed aside by those authorities.

A key player in this has been the unelected, unaccountable European Central Bank, which previously held a gun to the head of the Irish Government, demanding that we go into a bailout and that bondholders not be burned. It has a noose around the neck of the Greek economy in the form of restricted access to ECB funding for Greek banks, and it is using that noose to threaten the collapse of the Greek banks in order to demand the humiliation of the Greek Government.

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