Richard Boyd Barrett TD, Finance spokesperson for the United Left Alliance, will join Soren Sondergaard MEP from Denmark and Dublin MEP, Paul Murphy (Socialist Party/ULA), speaking at a public meeting in Dublin’s Liberty Hall tonight at 7.30pm.
Deputy Boyd Barrett says that tonight’s public meeting is the first step in a plan to organise a major public campaign for a’ No’ vote to the fiscal treaty. He believes that passing the treaty will have an extremely damaging effect on the prospects for job creation and economic growth both in Ireland and across Europe.
Richard Boyd Barrett said: “We will be calling for a major public mobilisation behind the ‘No’ campaign at tonight’s meeting. This country has been savaged by austerity over the last three years with the consequences being mass unemployment, emigration and cruel cuts inflicted on our most vulnerable citizens. If this treaty is passed, it is a recipe for another decade of austerity and economic stagnation. It is a treaty that will crush the prospects for job creation and economic recovery. The treaty takes us further down the road of an austerity policy that has already demonstrably failed both here, in Greece and across Europe. Enough is enough. It’s time to call a halt to the crazy austerity agenda and to demand that issues such as job creation, protection of vital services and fairness in dealing with the current economic crisis. We need to challenge government spin and scaremongering about the treaty and point out that austerity is not a cure for the economic crisis but is rather – alongside the bank bail-out to which it is indissolubly linked – the poison that is rapidly strangling our economy and our society.”