IT “beggars belief” that when Ireland is being “crucified” by the EU-IMF deal, the Government “thinks we should celebrate our membership of the European Union”, according to Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP, Dún Laoghaire).
He said celebrating Europe Day was “beyond pathetic”. It was “the sick joke of a bankrupt Government” he said, asking the Government parties “what planet are you on?”
Real EU solidarity he said, would mean emulating Arabic people “who are having their spring and resisting injustice and dictatorship in the Arab world”.
During the special one-day Dáil debate on the EU, observed by some 30 members of the diplomatic corps, Mr Boyd Barrett said the EU-IMF deal “is not a straitjacket, nor is it a bailout. It is a burial of Irish society.”
If the attendance were to truly reflect Ireland’s current relationship with the EU “Jean-Claude Trichet of the ECB would be sitting in the Taoiseach’s seat, flanked by the heads of the Bundesbank and the other big European banks, and all the public representatives in this chamber would be bound and gagged”.
Socialist TD Joe Higgins (Dublin West) said it was a “fiction” that the European Central Bank “is independent in the exercise of its powers. In the aftermath of the Irish property crash, the ECB blatantly represents the interests not of the people of Europe but of the major European banks, vampire hedge funds and assorted speculators.”
They were “dictating that their massive private gambling debts be piled on the shoulders of the Irish people” despite the fact that it would lower the living standards, “destroy tens of thousands of jobs, depress the economy generally and leave this State hovering over a black hole of bankruptcy”.
Independent Maureen O’Sullivan (Dublin Central) expressed the fear that the EU’s development aid budget would be “diverted or reduced, either openly or surreptitiously, towards security and increased militarisation to promote the self-serving interests of certain European countries”.
Ms O’Sullivan, who acknowledged that the EU was the largest donor of development aid, said “we need to remember and stress forcefully that we are a neutral country. Unlike other countries’ forces, our troops have an excellent reputation as peacekeepers.”
