The press revelations of claims made by our former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan that the European Central Bank and the European Union played the decisive role in forcing the bank bailout in the form of the bank guarantee only confirms what our Repudiate the Dept campaign has been saying since its foundation.
The Irish people will be forced to pay for a crisis not of their making. State assets will be sold of to pay for a debt that is not our responsibility. Generations to come of our people will have to carry a burden that is the responsibility of a Government is clearly failing and is now hopelessly mired in debt.
In the same weeks that this Government of no-hopers assembles to mark the 95th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, it also implements the same policies as the previous Government that abandoned the people for the sake of German and French banks. The country’s independence is all but gone, and they are incapable of asserting any resistance or opposition to the juggernaut of the EU/ECB.
It is time for the trade union movement and all democratic opinion to shed the illusions that the EU/ECB are friends of our people or our country. We must build the campaign to repudiate this unjust, unpayable and anti-democratic debt. We once again call for a referendum on this debt, to allow the people to decide.
Eoghan O’Neill
Repudiate the Debt
