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

Sometimes when we propose that we need to significantly increase investment in social housing, the creaking public health system, public transport or other strategic areas of industry and enterprise that are in need of investment such as the arts, forestry, the sustainable energy sector or whatever else, the Government accuses us of fantasy economics because, of course, we do not have the money for it. Quite often, those of us on the left respond by pointing to untapped sources of tax revenue in the areas of wealth generation, profits and financial transactions. It is something we should talk about more because it is so obvious and the motion highlights it. If we ask where the money is, it is almost childlike to answer that it is in the banks. However, it is literally in the banks. The money for all of the investment mentioned is in the banks. In the case of AIB, €20 billion of public money was put into it. These are banks that generated €1 billion in pre-tax profits in the first six months of last year and €1.9 billion in pre-tax profits in 2015. Before the crash, the two big banks were averaging approximately €2 billion a year in profits and they are now moving back into that territory. We put in €20 billion when the banks collapsed and helped to collapse the rest of the economy. Just at the moment when they are starting to make money, we want to give them away again. One could not make it up.

It is madness to consider selling off AIB now or at any point, at it was madness to sell off most of our shares in the Bank of Ireland after bailing it out. What we should be doing is establishing and absorbing AIB into a public, not-for-profit banking system whereby we would direct investment and lending policy at strategic priorities for the State in terms of capital expenditure, infrastructure and the development of strategic enterprise and industry. It is so obvious that we should do this. After bailing the banks out, crippling the country and the cost of doing so, then nursing them back to health, we are now talking about flogging them off. All of the profits they are going to accumulate in the coming years will be given away to private investors. It is just bonkers and I do not know what case can be put forward for it. I cannot think of any other explanation for it other than ideological blindness and addiction to neoliberal dogma. There is finally recognition that we do not have enough capital investment but we are going to give away a vehicle that could actually deliver it. I find it ridiculous when we debate how distressed mortgage holders are being mistreated by the banks or how lending by the banks into areas such as housing is not satisfactory and we even have Fine Gael and other Government Members giving out about the behaviour of the banks. We own the banks, but the Government will not assert any control over them. Why is that? It is partly due to the ideological fetishes and addictions of Fine Gael and, albeit in a slightly diluted form, Fianna Fáil. The Labour Party has also joined in that failed neoliberal consensus, as is indicated by its support for the fiscal rules and, before them, the Lisbon treaty.

I hate the politics of "I told you so." I must also tell my Sinn Féin comrades that it was not just Sinn Féin that had this analysis. The left had it also, going right back to the previous treaties. In fact, the main plank of our opposition to the Lisbon treaty, the previous treaties and the fiscal rules was not sovereignty issues, as was the case for some, although they were important; nor was it democracy issues or even military issues. The main plank of our opposition was that the state aid rules and subsequently the fiscal rules would act as an economic straitjacket which would prevent us from strategically investing in key areas of infrastructure, the economy, or strategic enterprise. Now finally, belatedly, this recognition seems to be occurring across the board at the budget scrutiny committee, amazingly, accompanied, however, by total amnesia about the fact that we had warned that this would be the case. When we did so in the fiscal treaty debate on the state aid rules and the Lisbon treaty, we were told we did not know what we were talking about and that we were making it up. Now we are stuck in that straitjacket and there is talk of special pleading. I am glad that we are recognising it at last, but why on earth did the other parties not see it coming?

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