Promissory note deal will not relieve Ireland’s debt burden
United Left Alliance spokesperson on Finance, Richard Boyd Barrett TD in a statement today, said that the Government’s deal on the promissory note due to be paid on 31st March is nothing more than a gimmick to get the Fiscal Treaty through.
An arrangement to avoid the Anglo pay-out at the end of March will not relieve Ireland’s debt but will in fact make it even more difficult to write-down the debt at a future date. What this arrangement will do is turn a crazy commitment made by Fianna fail to bail out Anglo into sovereign debt which it was not previously when this Fine Gael- Labour government could have repudiated the debt.
Interest will have to be paid and no-one knows yet what this might be.
Michael Noonan’s announcement confirms that Anglo gambling debts are officially the responsibility of Irish citizens when the government could have repudiated this debt that is not ours or written off this debt that is not ours.
This arrangement will be dependent on imposing more austerity not just through the IMF programme but in perpetuity through the Fiscal Treaty.
Richard Boyd Barrett said in his statement, “This is financial accounting trickery to get the Fiscal Treaty through and it is dependent on austerity. We were promised 10 years of austerity and it could now be 13 years of austerity.” “None of this is meaningful unless the Government also says it is going to reverse the cuts to lone parents, reverse the cuts to the Domiciliary care allowance, reverse the cuts to special needs assistants, reverse cuts to CE schemes and the list goes on” “This will mean nothing if the government does not have a plan to invest in jobs and actually one of the consequences of the Fiscal Treaty going though is that it will prohibit governments across the EU investing in public works programmes”.