PBPA TD also condemns government legislation to sell Bord Gais Energy as a “looting” of public resources to benefit banks and foreign multinationals
In a statement, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, People Before Profit Alliance and member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, has said that the figures today published by the CSO “reveal that government and Troika austerity policies are continuing to crush the domestic economy, and that growth in the multinational sector is providing little benefit to the economy, as billions of profits and royalties are being sucked straight out of the county.”
“All the domestic economy indicators are negative – either stagnating or getting worse – while the only growth area is multinationals posting enormous profits which are then sucked straight out of the economy in the form of profits and royalties that are barely taxed or not taxed at all.”
The Deputy said “the CSO figures show clearly that while the home economy and our citizens are being beggared multinational profits are shooting up and we are getting no benefit from it whatsoever.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett said that, “given the obvious damage being done to economic growth in the domestic economy as a result of austerity policies, it is bordering on economic madness to suck another two and half to three billion out of the economy, as the government are planning to do in further cuts and austerity taxes, in the October budget.”
He said the government were trying to “lure people into a debate about whether the austerity measures in the forthcoming budget would be two and half billion or three billion, when the real issue is the need to rapidly abandon an austerity policy that was failing at every level, in favour of a policy focused on direct investment, job creation and social fairness.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett said that in the context of the domestic economic crisis and huge amounts of profit flooding out of the country, the government decision to commence legislation to facilitate the sale of Bord Gais Energy to foreign multinational’s amounted to “further economic lunacy and the looting of vital public assets that could be used to generate desperately needed jobs and real economic wealth for the citizens of the country.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett who spoke in the second stage Dail debate (see video below) on the planned sale of Bord Gais Energy and called vote to oppose the facilitating bill said, “It was utterly shameful that a Labour Minister, Pat Rabitte, should propose legislation to sell off a valuable and highly profitable public asset to pay the gambling debts of bankers and that this asset would then transfer to a foreign multinational to suck more profits out of the country and out of the pockets of hard-pressed families. It’s a heist. It amounts to looting.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydelaUwtkOk