Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister to the House. Every Member knows how I will vote on this legislation. The Minister has already debated this Bill with my colleague in the Dáil.

In his speech the Minister referred to European solidarity, rescue funds and the Greek economy. However, not enough emphasis was put on the plight of the Greek people who have had crippling austerity measures imposed on them. Neither did we hear that by the end of 2011, 21% of Greek people were out of work, of which 50% of them are young people. Homelessness has increased by 25% and poverty by 28%. One in five Greek people living in poverty can only afford meals with meat every second day. The Athens suicide hotline reports the number of calls it receives doubled to 5,000 in 2011. All this is as a result of austerity, cutbacks and economic contraction.

Now we are asked to support this second bailout which will cause further hardship for ordinary Greek people and impose further influence and vetoes over their democratic processes. The first bailout was not successful by any means. Greece still remains locked out of the bond markets and its government debt continues to spiral out of control. According to many of the social and economic indicators, the first bailout did not work. This new deal will force Greece to slash its minimum wage, sell off state assets and put generations in hock to foreign moneylenders.

This is not right. The Greeks and the wider eurozone needs a change in direction with a new approach to investment in economic growth, a proper cleansing of the European banking system and real debt write-downs across the European Union. Investment in job creation is urgently required especially in those countries that are on the periphery. This can be achieved by combining the resources of member states such as in our case using the €5.4 billion in the discretionary portfolio of the National Pensions Reserve Fund with an enlarged investment from the European Investment Bank. The existing funds of that bank should be supplemented by a once-off investment in members states on a proportional basis. Rather than doing this through fiscal transfers between states, this could be done in the form of sound investments with sound returns. As Einstein said, we cannot continue to doing the same thing expecting different results. He also said: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

Greece and Ireland need to have a portion of their debts written down. In Ireland's case, this could be done by writing down debts that were originally banking debts while continuing to honour sovereign debt. That continuity is the critical point. In the first instance, this would require lifting the obligation on the State and the taxpayer imposed by Anglo Irish Bank's promissory notes. This could be achieved with the agreement of the European Central Bank, ECB, and reduce our debt to GDP ratio by as much as 20%.

Sinn Féin will oppose the Bill. Contrary to the Minister's comments, it is not in the spirit of solidarity. Rather, it is about punishing and, to some extent, scapegoating people. It will inflict untold further pain on the Greek people without enacting real reforms at the wider level or cleansing the banking system. Until we have such reforms and start questioning the role of banks in the eurozone crisis, Sinn Féin will oppose the Bill.