Warning over 'splurge of speculation'

PROTEST:FUTURE GENERATIONS will have to pay for the "splurge of speculation" which had ruined the economy, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore told a protest against Nama outside the Dáil yesterday.

Mr Gilmore was addressing a group of about 300 Labour and trade union members, mostly from Siptu, who gathered to protest against the establishment of Nama before yesterday’s Dáil session.

Young people had paid over-inflated prices for their homes over the last 10 years and would continue to pay for the property bubble through Nama for years and generations for come, Mr Gilmore said.

“Fianna Fáil fuelled a splurge of speculation and a property bubble in this country. They drove up the price of development land and they tax incentivised a speculative property boom that was unsustainable.

“How did this Fianna Fáil Government turn around a good economy which was built on the back of the hard work of the very people who were buying those houses and turn it into the kind of economic depression we have now?”

The banking system must be reformed in the interests of the public and not the developers and the answer was not Nama, but a temporary nationalisation of the banks, Mr Gilmore said.

Community groups opposing cuts in funding for the community sector also protested against Nama outside the Dáil yesterday.

The recently formed United Alliance Against Cuts, which also involved Sinn Féin and the People before Profit Alliance, said Nama was a rip-off of the poor by Ireland’s “golden circle”.

Rita Fagan a member of the community regeneration organisation of St Michael’s Estate in Inchicore Dublin, said the Government was trying to brainwash the public into believing that they had a responsibility to solve the problems created by the banks.

“We need to knock on the head the idea that everyone has to pay. Not everyone benefited from the Celtic Tiger,” she said.

It was clearly unfair that Nama was giving €60 billion to “failed banks” she said, while at the same time cutting funding for the most vulnerable. “People on social welfare have to deal with a 5 per cent cut. If you’re a loan parent the loss of just that small bit of money is devastating.”

Protests against Nama began at 11am yesterday outside the Dáil and continued to 2pm.

Responding to the speech made by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on the Nama Bill, Siptu general president Jack O’Connor said in a statement that the scheme, as proposed, exposed the tax-payer to a massive risk.

“The potential exposure of €54 billion in tax payers money which will be paid for €77 billion in bank loans with no certainty as to any return and no guarantee that it will encourage essential bank lending is an extremely worrying prospect,” he said.