“Our banks, uniquely, have weathered this storm. We are in a zone of financial stability in a very troubled financial world”.   

 

These are the words of Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan T.D in September 2008. A short two weeks later he described the bank guarantee which the government was forced to implement to save those financial institutions from imminent collapse as “the cheapest bail-out in the world so far”. The guarantee, the government proclaimed, had addressed the crisis in our financial institutions. This crisis, they claimed, had come about due to the credit crunch which followed the collapse of Lehmans Bank and had nothing to do with bad business practice in our financial community. “The public could rest assured that everything was under control and that credit would begin to flow once more into the coffers of the financial institutions, and from there to the public”, Minister Lenihan confidently declared.

When the assurance of the government’s financial regulator, Patrick Neary, that “bad lending by Irish banks had nothing to do with the crisis”, and that “Irish banks had plenty of capital to absorb any losses in the property sector”, failed to reassure an increasingly worried public, the minister commissioned the auditors, Price, Waterhouse, Coopers to examine the banks’ books. Minister Lenihan was delighted to subsequently inform the public that the auditors report confirmed that the “banks were well capitalised and would not require recapitalisation”.

Almost two years later the full outrageous cost of the calamitous decisions taken by this incompetent government are all too sadly evident to an outraged public. As a result of the crony capitalism, and incompetence beyond ones wildest imagination, the government’s decision, to guarantee our banks, has left the citizens of this state lumbered with financial debts which will disastrously affect the quality of life of this, and indeed, many future generations.

NAMA, the vehicle which the government chose to adopt to ensure that the outrageous debts which the wealthy elite had created during the boom, could now be transferred to the public purse, would, Minister Lenihan blithely assured us, “wash its own face and possibly even make a profit for the tax-payer”. Again time has told us a different story and those who were aghast at this proposal from the outset and warned of its real and disastrous intent have been proven correct. Prominent amongst those was the American Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who blasted NAMA as “highway robbery” and that it represented “a simple transfer from taxpayers to bondholders which would saddle generations to come”. His comment that the NAMA project was similar to mechanisms which economists had witnessed before only with “guns pointing at the heads of political leaders” and that he had been “very disappointed to see that it had happened, not only in banana republics, but in advanced industrialised countries”, reflected the truly scandalous nature of the Irish government’s intentions.

The true cost of the latest decisions taken by our political class for the benefit of the privileged elite in this country is fast becoming evident to all. Every man, woman and child now has a personal tax-debt which currently amounts to €18,000. When one considers that the most privileged members of Irish society pay little or no tax the outrageous inequity of this situation becomes all the more evident.  The Minister for Finance then refused to consider implementing changes to our tax-system which would require the richest to make some contribution to cleaning up the economic mess they had been integrally involved in creating, on the basis that “the elite would leave the country”.

Instead the government chose to take between €10 to €12 billion out of the economy by increasing taxes, cutting wages and reducing services, all of which caused great hardship to ordinary citizens in both public and private sectors and did irreparable harm to the very economy they were supposed to be trying to protect. This was at odds with nearly every other country in the world that chose to fight the worst recession the world had witnessed in eighty years by stimulating their economies with vast investment. In Britain, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have fought this election vigorously opposing the Conservatives plans to take just £6 billion from their vast economy, on the basis that these cuts risked tipping the country into a double dip recession.

In Ireland, the government, aided by their allies in the elite ‘partnership of privilege’, have decreed that the policies which they employed to create our excessive boom are now to be employed to help us exit the severest economic depression the State has ever witnessed. It is this blind ignorance which is leading us day by day nearer to economic oblivion from which it will be hard to escape. From the very initial stages of this homemade economic crisis, when the government refused to accept that there was even a problem, to the current day when every single decision they take proves to be economically disastrous it has become increasingly evident that they are not fit for duty.

The contempt which the Irish government holds for its citizens is clear from Brian Lenihan’s arrogant declaration that had his combination of tax-hikes and spending cuts been taken by the French Finance minister then “such harsh decisions, would have been met by riots on the streets”. Their incompetence can be perfectly illustrated by the manner in which almost every policy, decision and indeed statement is inevitably proven incorrect.

“We are not Greece”, we were repeatedly informed by our government and their allies over the past few months. Now, as a result of the billions which our government is ploughing into the incinerator that is Anglo Irish Bank, and the countless other billions which are being used to bail-out the other financial institutions, we are officially the most indebted nation in the Eurozone.

This may be the ideal time to reflect on the mutterings of one angry Greek demonstrator who took to the streets in Athens to protest at his government’s attempts to correct the financial mess in Greece by adopting some of the measures which Brian Lenihan had employed in this country. Speaking to the BBC he bluntly declared,

“We are not Ireland! We will not lie down and let our government punish us for a financial crisis we were not responsible for creating!” 

Expecting the elite to endanger their privileged position in Irish Society by upsetting the status quo is futile and unrealistic. It is time for ordinary citizens of Ireland to act immediately in the interest of future generations. Protect jobs and services.

We must not fail our children. We must not compromise their futures.

We must act now to stop the bank bail-outs.

In the future what will you say when they ask you, What did you do?

 

It’s time to act. Join the march to the Dáil. Tuesday 11 May 7.30. From the Garden of Remembrance to Dáil Éireann. Keynote speaker: Fintan O’Toole. Protect all our children’s futures not just theirs. Spread the word, Send to all.