Richard Boyd Barrett TD

ESM a permanent and sinister mechanism to inflict even more poisonous austerity

Angela Merkel and ECB making fools of the Irish Government

In a statement, Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Finance spokesperson for People Before Profit/United Left Alliance has condemned the government for imposing a guillotine on the second stage of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Bill to be debated in the Dáil today – claiming that the government were deliberately ramming the ESM legislation through the Dáil to avoid full public discussion on the so-called permanent “bail-out” mechanism.

Deputy Boyd Barrett who will spoke on the ESM Bill in the Dáil today said that with a second “bail-out” now looming for Ireland, the government were desperate to prevent full public knowledge of the reality of the ESM and the implications it would have for Ireland and the wider Eurozone.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said the government did not want the public to become acquainted with the details of the ESM as it would reveal that the ESM was not a bail-out mechanism but rather a permanent and sinister mechanism for inflicting even more poisonous austerity on ordinary citizens in Ireland and elsewhere in the Eurozone.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said the government’s eagerness to ram the ESM through was a further pathetic capitulation to Angela Merkel and the ECB when Merkel and ECB were refusing point blank requests for a deal on Irish Banking debt in the aftermath of the “yes” vote on the Fiscal treaty.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said the government submission to Chancellor Merkel and the ECB was even more bizarre at a time when countries such as Spain, Greece and France were beginning to openly challenge the German Chancellor’s insistence that ordinary citizens should pay to bail-out “Casino” banks with further crippling austerity.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said: “It is absolutely disgraceful that the government are imposing a guillotine on the ESM Bill debate in the Dáil when this bill will have such far reaching consequences for the ordinary citizens of Ireland – if as looks near certain we are forced into a second so-called bail-out programme.”

Throughout the Fiscal Treaty referendum campaign the government presented the ESM as if it was some sort of benevolent fund to help ordinary citizens if Ireland needed assistance in the future. The reality is that the ESM is not a means to bail-out ordinary citizens rather it is a permanent and very sinister mechanism to inflict further poisonous doses of austerity.

Any so-called “assistance” from the ESM is “strictly conditional” on the ESM dictating further austerity on programme countries and forcing the citizens of those countries to take responsibility for the gambling debts of private bankers and speculators. How the government could refer to such a mechanism as a “bail-out,” an “insurance policy” for ordinary people beggars belief.

Furthermore, Irish citizens may be called upon to fork-out over €11 billion euro or even more to bail-out banks across Europe and for the privilege of being part of this new European austerity club.

One of the most shocking things about the ESM is that it and all its governors and staff will be immune from prosecution or any kind of public or legal oversight, and that no investigation of any kind of its inner workings will be allowed. It is an entity that will be completely above the law, accountable to no-one, even though it will be one of the most powerful financial institutions in Europe. The ESM is a deeply sinister development that embodies the accelerating destruction of democracy in Europe to protect the dictatorship of financial markets and casino banks.

The government’s eagerness to ram through the ESM is a further pathetic capitulation to Angela Merkel and the ECB when the government’s requests for a deal on Irish Banking debt in the aftermath of the referendum are being dismissed out of hand.

The government’s submission to Merkel and the ECB is even more bizarre at a time when countries such as Spain, Greece and France are beginning to openly challenge the German Chancellor’s insistence that ordinary citizens should pay to bail-out “Casino” banks with further crippling austerity.

The government are humiliating themselves, making door-mats of the Irish people, while at the same time trying to ride on the coat-tails of Greece and Spain if the greater level of back-bone they are displaying yields any results. Really, it is a spineless and pathetic position.”