TD’s had better think before voting.

By Eamonn Blaney

As we get closer to the financial and social endgame resulting from Fianna Fail and the Greens governance are country, their incompetence and lies are laid bare for all to see. Those of us who were advised to go and commit suicide by the then leader Mr. Bertie Ahern and didn’t, can see their very worst nightmares coming to fruition. We knew it was going to be bad but we could never have conceived just how bad it has become. And this is really just the start.

In a speech in 2007 Mr. Ahern promised that in a fall would reduce the gap between what we spent and what we took in taxes than revenues. He lied. Mr. Cowen, who was then the finance minister, simply went along with what ever he was advised to do by those total incompetents in the Department of Finance. The big accountancy and legal firms operating in Dublin who oversaw audits of the major banks and financial institutions, and charged millions for it, reported that everything was okay, these companies also lied.

I could go on but there seems to be little point because all this will happen unless we as citizens of this country decide that it will not. We will get this opportunity as soon as the general election is called. It would appear that the majority will vote for Fine Gael or perhaps Labour, yet these two parties both agree with the full implementation of the Croke Park agreement. In case you don’t know, this agreement effectively states that there should be no forced redundancies in the public service and nor should there be any decrease in salaries or pension entitlements.

I do not blame those dedicated individuals who work hard in the public service but the reality is that the organisation is totally ineffective, inefficient and self-serving. This is the perception among the majority of those who pay for it i.e. the general public.

Fine Gael, despite all the hot air and rhetoric being spouted by their senior party members including Richard Bruton, have effectively agreed that they will implement to the letter, all directives and instructions handed down to us by our new masters in the EU and the IMF. This is just Fine Fail policy by another name. These people do seem to have even considered the immorality of what the present government has done.

In 2008 come just before the crash, the total value of the combined production of every citizen in Ireland was €207 billion. This figure is also known as our gross domestic product or GDP. This is not the amount of wealth that we retained but merely the value of our outputs which result from our work. These goods and services are then traded both home and abroad, for profit.

To put this into some context, If the “bailout” goes ahead with a Fine Gael led government we will be asked to pay 5.75% interest per year on average on all monies drawn down. This is the rate of interest which “our friends” feel they must charge us to cover the risk that we may default sometime in the future, even though the reason why Fianna Fail agreed to the loan was so that we would not default! Go figure.

If the eighty or so Anglo Irish Bank bondholders alone, earned this amount of interest on the assets which they have under management (€20,815 Billion!), they would earn €1043.55 billion every year in interest. Yet we are told that is absolutely inconceivable, unacceptable and a condition of our loan from the IMF and EU that we must not burn the bondholders for a paltry €4 billion! The government, as a result of extending the bank guarantee, has committed each and every Irish citizen to repaying these bondholders every single cent which they invested plus the interest on these monies. And Fine Gale are proposing to continue this act of economic treason.

These investors of risk capital cannot it seems, be allowed to lose under any circumstances. Whatever happened to that head wrecking slogan “investments can rise as well as fall…”? Oh yeah, that only applies to the unfortunate gobshites like you and me, who are not part of Irelands ruling classes. The question I would like answered is how is it as a society , we have allowed this to happen and accept it? How can any member of the present Dail can go back to their consistency with out being harangued at every opportunity?

Any member of the present Dail who does not vote down the proposed budget on December 7 should be ostracised from their community. Over 90% of the people of this country do not want to pay the bondholders and a significant majority do not agree with imposing a budget that has no provision whatsoever for a reduction in public service numbers nor does it contain a job creation strategy which is costed and time-lined.

I would say to any member of the present Dail to think long and hard about why you are there, who you represent and what your choices are as an individual. You can think of your party or your personal career but I would strongly suggest you think of the people. This time, we will not forget who represented us and who betrayed us and all those who came before us and turned a bog field into a modern vibrant democracy.

I would say to any member of the present Dail, to think long and hard about why you are there, who you represent and what your choices are as an individual. You can think of your party or your personal career before you vote but I would strongly suggest you think of the people you are supposed to represent. This time, we will not forget who represented us and who betrayed us.