The five United Left Alliance TDs; Richard Boyd Barrett, Joan Collins, Clare Daly, Joe Higgins and Seamus Healy, today called for a NO vote in the referendum on the Fiscal Treaty – the austerity treaty.
The treaty will require unsustainable deficit and debt rules, greater powers for the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice and arrangements that will mean austerity budgets and impossible targets for the foreseeable future-an estimated €5 Billion in cuts every year on top of the cuts planned already. The FG/Labour government tried their hardest to deny the Irish people a say on this treaty. The Treaty states that these arrangements would be binding, permanent and preferably constitutional. The word preferably was inserted to enable the Irish Government try to avoid a referendum; despite the majority of people in Ireland (72%) wanting a referendum.
A NO vote in Ireland would strengthen democracy in Europe. Currently unelected ‘technocrats’ rule at the behest of the ECB and the bankers in two European parliaments – Greece and Italy.
A NO vote in Ireland would hasten the end of the rule of unelected bankers throughout Europe. We reject any blackmail by the government on this treaty.
A NO vote does not mean an immediate withdrawal from the euro or from the EU – it simply means that we reject a Europe where bankers and bondholders come first.
Previous governments and the current government parties blackmailed voters with threats that voting NO in the Lisbon Treaty would mean job losses when in fact it was the policies enshrined in that treaty and pushed by those parties that fuelled the crazy speculative boom. The experience of Greece shows that a policy of cuts, austerity and deepening neo-liberalism is a failure and makes the crisis worse. The ULA is confident that the Irish people will see through any government blackmail and vote NO in this referendum. Ireland has a proud record of standing up to the bullying of European bureaucrats, we will do so again.