Seanad debates

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

11:00 am

Photo of David NorrisDavid Norris (Independent)

I very much doubt if either the establishment of a casino in County Tipperary which is projected, or an increase in the number of jobs in the area of gambling will have a major impact on the economy of Ireland or Europe, although I wish the proposed solutions will work.

Three years ago I gave a lecture in Cork in honour of Mr. Philip Monahan, the former city and county manager of Cork and a remarkable man, in which I stated that, as with developments in addressing climate change, financial events of the type we are experiencing would be more catastrophic and would occur at an increasingly rapid rate and closer together. That is what has transpired and we are tinkering with the problem by applying an Elastoplast to it. We do not have a profound analysis of what is wrong with the entire system which is being manipulated in the interests of a tiny group of speculators, domestically and on international money markets, to the enormous disadvantage of the vast swathe of the population outside this small group. What I call the Leona Helmsley effect has come into play. Leona Helmsley was a woman with an enormous property portfolio who was dragged into court in New York on tax charges ten or 15 years ago. Her statement that she assumed only the little people paid tax was correct. No one is examining the matter in a thorough manner. Let us consider the whole capitalist project. How can it continue to work when it is based on an infinitely expanding market? How intelligent must one be to realise we are living on a planet, the limits of which are being reached in certain fundamental commodities such as water and fossil fuels? It is about time we stood up collectively to the big players in the market. It is time we, as a nation, stood up to some of the big companies such as Shell.

One cannot blame them as they are akin to Tyrannosaurus rex but we should stand up.

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