People must take to the streets to demand jobs, fairness and the jailing of gangster bankers
In a statement, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, Finance spokesperson for People Before Profit/ULA, has responded to the latest CSO economic figures, showing that the Irish economy has moved back into recession, saying the figures expose the “abysmal failure of the government and Troika austerity policies” and the “continuing cost to ordinary people of bailing out “gangster”banks, like Anglo-Irish bank.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett said the figures confirmed the need to abruptly abandon the discredited policy of bank bail-outs and austerity in favour of policies focused on direct public investment to generate growth and jobs.
Deputy Boyd Barrett added that the “Anglo tapes” provided “further evidence that Irish citizens had no moral responsibility to pay-off the debts run-up by the private banking system and that the government should immediately repudiate those debts and use the billions currently being paid out in debt interest to fund a major public investment and jobs programme.”
Richard Boyd Barrett TD said: “The CSO confirm what some of us having being saying for a long time – namely, the policy of austerity and paying off bankers debts, is not only cruel and unjust, it is destroying our economy and the wider EU economy.
The “Anglo tapes” add the ultimate insult to this injury. These laughing gangster bankers are walking around rich and free while the country has been driven onto its knees and shows no sign of getting up.
Government’s rhetoric that “it’s painful but it’s working” has been exposed for the bogus clap-trap that it is. To continue down the road of cuts to meet these banker’s debts is a recipe for long-term economic depression. We have to stop this humiliation and stupidity.
The CSO figures, taken along-side the “Anglo tapes,” show, we have both the moral and practical right to repudiate the debts run-up by gangster bankers and use our resources to fund a major public investment and jobs programme.
This year we are paying out €8 billion in interest to pay-off debts that were run-up as result of the gangster activities of bankers like those in Anglo. Five years on, we are still being bled dry as result of what these people have done, and yet, the politicians continue to protect them.
We urgently need to get out on the streets and say, we have enough of this. We need a coming together of all those hundreds of thousands of people, who are suffering as result what bankers and politicians have done, to form a people’s movement demanding fairness, justice and jobs.”