A NO vote in the May 31st referendum on the European fiscal compact treaty could derail Government plans to be out of the bailout programme within two years, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has warned.
“I am confident we will achieve our targets but there are things that can blow us off course,” he said. One of them, he added, would be if people accepted the “twisted advice” of Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald and voted against the treaty.
The pact obliges member states to keep budget deficits and public debts within tight limits
Ms McDonald had insisted it fell within the Government’s gift to exercise its veto and ensure that no funding mechanism at European level was designed in such a way as to block out Ireland.
She said that in the absence of any positive argument for cutbacks and austerity, the Government cynically chose to scaremonger.
Ms McDonald challenged Mr Gilmore to set the record straight and tell the people the full authority that the Government had in the matter.
“Reassure the House that the Government will ensure that the State has access,” she added. “That is in the Government’s gift, as he well knows.”
Mr Gilmore accused Ms McDonald of having “a hard neck” to ask him to set the record straight. “Her party published a leaflet selectively quoting economists who support the treaty to give the impression they are opposing it,” he said.
When Mr Gilmore accused Ms McDonald of offering twisted advice, the Sinn Féin TD said she objected to such personal insults.
“I am not going to sit here to be insulted,” she said.
The Tánaiste said he was not referring personally to Ms McDonald but the leaflet issued by her party.
“The advice she is now trying to sell is that somehow the Irish people can reject this treaty while being able to access emergency funding is twisted and misleading,” he added.
He said there had been no discussion with the EU-IMF-ECB troika about a second bailout.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said unions and governments across Europe, including some of the Tánaiste’s former comrades in the Irish trade union movement, are against the pact because the required austerity would be disastrous.
“The Government stands almost alone with Angela Merkel in continuing to promote this treaty as a good thing,” he added.
Mr Gilmore said treaty or no treaty the deficit would have to be reduced, because the only way to bridge the gap between what was being taken in and being spent was by borrowing.
“In order to borrow we have to find people who will lend to us,” he added.
“Since the previous government put us into the EU-IMF programme, nobody in the private financial markets will lend to this country.”
Mr Boyd Barrett said the claim that we were likely to grow our way out of the recession was a fairy tale, given the economic climate and the figures available.
