Late on Wednesday evening February
6th the Irish government rushed to introduce emergency legislation
into the Oireachtas to liquidate Anglo-Irish Bank, now called the Irish Bank
Resolution Corporation.
This was part of a package
of moves by the government which it claims will allow it to avoid paying the
annual €3.1 billion Promissory Note.
Sinn Féin voted against the
Bill.
In my contribution to the
debate I said:
This Bill will turn bad banking debt into sovereign
debt - Adams
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams
TD speaking in the debate on February 6th on the liquidation of Anglo-Irish
Bank said:
Here we are at 1.30 a.m. and we have not been told
anything by the Government about this issue. The most revealing part of the
Minister's contribution was the following statement:
‘I would have preferred to
be introducing this Bill in tandem with a finalised agreement with the European
Central Bank. However, I understand the European Central Bank will continue to
consider the proposals made by the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland,
with the agreement of the Government, tomorrow.’
Why can this Bill
not be brought forward in tandem with that finalised agreement tomorrow?
Instead, we are
presented with legislation in a vacuum. We did not even receive it until 10.30
p.m., our finance spokespersons did not receive proper briefings and the
European Central Bank has made no statement.
The Bill is but one
half of a package and the Dáil is being denied the right to see the other half.
We cannot even
table amendments to the Bill.
This is the
Government that promised to operate in a different way. Deputies are denied the
right to speak on this issue.
This is not the way
in which the Dáil should be doing business. It smacks of the type of stroke
politics that Fianna Fáil pulled in its time and that Fine Gael and Labour
rightly condemned.
The actual liquidation of Anglo Irish Bank,
as opposed to the nonsense we are discussing tonight, should have been done
when the bank first collapsed.
That is what Sinn
Féin argued for.
This toxic bank and its connections
with speculators, developers and corrupt politicians, the "golden circle", brought
this State to its knees.
Instead of closing
the bank down, Fianna Fáil bailed it out and poured billions of euro in
taxpayers' money into it.
Labour came along
with Fine Gael and did exactly the same.
Instead of
liquidating the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation the Government wants to
compound this mistake by turning bad banking debt into sovereign Government
bonds, in effect, a Government promissory note.
It wants to wind
the bank down, but it does not want to wind down its debt.
The Government
wants the citizens to fall for this and for the Bill to be passed in two hours.
This comes after nearly two years of
negotiations that the Taoiseach continuously claimed were too intense, detailed
and technical for ordinary mortals and decent Deputies to understand.
Suddenly, the Bill
now has to be rushed through. This is a mark of the Government.
The Dáil has never seen the fabled
technical paper on the promissory note that, according to the Taoiseach, the
Minister has been working on for 18 months. Where is it?
What of the Government's claim in June that
there would be a deal on legacy debt by October? Where is it?
This is no way to deal with the Dáil.
No amount of crocodile tears will undo the
fact that, without notice and through the media, the workers were informed that
their jobs were finished.
This is no way to
deal with any kind of legislation, certainly not legislation as important as
the Bill before us.
To our cost, the State's citizens have learned that rushed legislation is bad legislation.
The test of the Government's
machinations and their outcomes will be whether our citizens benefit; whether
communities and low and middle-income families struggling under the burden of
the Government's austerity policies will be better off, whether we will finally
see a real jobs initiative and
whether we will see investment in growth.
Let us remind
ourselves that the Government's proposal is a U-turn on the claims following
the European Council meeting in June that there would be a deal on legacy debt
by October.
That month has come and gone, as has 2012, yet there is still no deal on legacy debt.
Neither is there a
separation, an idea to which the Government was converted after rubbishing Sinn
Féin's championing of the need to separate banking debt from sovereign debt.
On the contrary and
even on a cursory reading, the Bill will turn bad banking debt into sovereign
debt.
The Bill reads: "And whereas the winding up of the IBRC
is necessary to resolve the debt of the IBRC to the Central Bank of
Ireland".
No one should be
surprised. This Government promised that it would not give another red cent to
bad banks.
Then, in one of its first acts as a
Government, it paid €3.1 billion to Anglo Irish Bank. Despite our best wishes
and us willing the Government to do well, this is no game-changer or seismic
shift.
The critical issue was never whether there
would be a deal; it was what type of deal would be done.
Sinn Féin has long advocated a deal that
would remove the toxic banking debt from the shoulders of Irish citizens.
That is not what is being proposed. This is
not a write-down.
The Government never asked for a
write-down.
The overall stock of the debt remains the
same.
Sinn Féin does not accept that
restructuring or paying the debt over a longer timeframe is a credible deal for
the taxpayer.
The fact is, as the Minister said in
opposition, the promissory note should not be paid. It should not be paid for
the simple reason we cannot afford to pay it.
It is not our debt.
The Government’s approach will tie this bad
debt to citizens for decades to come – our children and grandchildren will have
to pay billions.
We are handing a legacy debt to them and we
have no idea what the economic and political circumstances will be when the
bonds mature.
That is wrong.
We should not place on the shoulders of
children not yet born a legacy which might well damage their future.
That is not good government. It is not good
strategic, visionary government.
It is short-term, short-sighted
opportunism.
It is matched only by the Government’s
flawed negotiating approach.
The Government needed to tell the ECB and
the EU that enough is enough.
Instead, it told the ECB and the EU that it
would honour the debt, that the Government would not have the word “defaulter”
written on our foreheads, and it gave up its best negotiating hand at the
outset.
The Government finds it easier to be
tougher on citizens than it does on our partners in the European Union.
It has cut respite care and child benefit,
the back to work clothing and footwear allowance and it has taxed maternity
benefit.
A family home tax is being introduced and
septic tank charges have been imposed. It is easy for the Government to be
tough on the small people.
There
will be no relief in what the Government is doing because it is tied to
austerity.
There will be no relief from the relentless
austerity citizens have endured to bail out bankers.
Every billion of the bad debt that is paid
is a cut to the health budget, an increase in PRSI, a new property tax, more
over-crowded classrooms, more workers out of jobs, more families struggling to
make ends meet, more Garda stations being closed and more nurses emigrating.
A
credible deal is one that will bring relief to citizens.
There have been six austerity budgets,
which have taken €28 billion out of the economy.
Sinn Féin has long argued for the end of
the IBRC. What we simply cannot support is turning the bad debts of this
bankrupt bank into sovereign debt.
It is not our debt.
It does not belong to the people of this
State and it never was.
Fianna Fáil saddled us with it in the first
place.
Sinn Féin cannot and will not support the
Government in doing this.
The Government should not proceed with the
Bill. It should bring forward the entire package, finish its deal with the ECB.
The Minister should
not miss the point I make.
We can all be smart alecs but Members
should listen to what I say.
The Minister should introduce the entire package
and deal with people as mature citizens who should be empowered by Government,
not denied their rights.
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