Siptu leader criticises free-market 'cheerleaders'

Shifting political support from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael would be the political equivalent of “leaping from the frying pan into…

Shifting political support from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael would be the political equivalent of “leaping from the frying pan into the fire”, the leader of the State’s largest trade union said.

Siptu general president Jack O’Connor was proposing a motion on the economy at the Labour Party conference in Kilkenny.

He said Fine Gael, along with Fianna Fáil and the PDs, had been “cheerleaders…of unfettered free marketeerism for as long as we can remember”, a model he said had been proven not to work.

“Despite all the seductive potency of the language of change employed by Fine Gael, the reality is that for any working person, shifting support from the PDs and Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael is the political equivalent of leaping from the frying pan into the fire,” he told delegates.

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The motion on the economic crisis applauded the “courageous and insightful” decision of the parliamentary Labour Party to oppose the blanket State guarantee for the financial institutions.

It said the guarantee by the Government was offered “without adequate provision regarding accountability or conditions as to their behaviour in the social sphere, such as, for example, in relation to home repossessions etc”.

The motion debated by delegates also said the “laissez faire, unfettered free-market approach” pursued by the Fianna Fáil/PD/Green Party Government “contributed considerably to the exacerbation of the economic crisis here”.

Mr O’Connor congratulated the parliamentary party for “not allowing itself to be blackmailed into the stampede to ratify the unconditional gilt-edged guarantee which the Irish people were signed up for to rescue the top people in our banking system just over eight weeks ago”.

“These were the same people who always insisted on the rigorous application of the brutal laws of the unfettered free market as far as ordinary citizens were concerned, including incidentally the Irish Ferries workers three years ago. But when calamity came to their own door they demanded state intervention on a mind-boggling scale,” he said.

The Siptu leader said that in offering the guarantee to the banks there was “no question as to accountability for the near ruination of our economy, the generation of one of the highest levels of private debt in the world, or the condemnation of tens of thousands of ordinary families to a life servicing crippling mortgage payments to put a roof over their head”.

“This was a result of having to bid against each other for unsustainable 100 per cent mortgages, all to make speculators, developers and bankers rich beyond their wildest dreams.”

Important as was accountability for past misdeeds, he said, it was much more important to set out a criteria for a sustainable future and a culture of social responsibility.

This should be reflected in a degree of democratic control over our banks in return for the "support and acceptance of enormous liabilities on the part of the Irish people".