Tuesday 24 June 2014

TWO YEARS ON FROM ENDA KENNY'S 'SEISMIC SHIFT'



 LETTER TO OUR EDITORS
Ballyhea
Co Cork
June 25th 2014
Dear Sir/Madam;

'Lions led by donkeys'; nearly a century on, that's how the British infantry (including tens of thousands of Irish) and its officer corps are remembered from the First World War.

I wonder, a century from now how will we and the current Irish political leadership be remembered?

Cast your mind back two years ago, to June 28th 2012 and yet another Eurozone summit meeting, the short statement issued at its conclusion on the separation of bank debt from sovereign debt, which included the following: 'The Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme.'
 
Remember Enda Kenny's 'seismic shift' boast – ‘I’m a hard grafter and, as some of them found out, they shouldn’t tangle with me too often’? Remember Eamon Gilmore's 'game-changer' bombast?
Two years on, what has shifted, what has changed?

For starters, we've had Michael Noonan's acclaimed Promissory Notes deal, Notes Michael himself described in an RTE interview as ‘illegal, totally' but which now sees that €25bn of disputed debt transformed to sovereign bonds. 

The first of those bonds are sold this year, €500,000,000, that money then destroyed by the Irish Central Bank; €500,000,000 a year in fact for the next five years, borrowed and burned, then €1,000,000,000 a year for the following five years, €2,000,000,000 a year for eight years and finally, in 2032, the last bond, €1,500,000,000. 

A total of €25,000,000,000 that had been used at the behest of the EC/ECB to bail out two bust banks, now borrowed by this broke and broken country and burned at the behest of that same EC/ECB, all set up by a compliant, obeisant Kenny/Gilmore government without even a murmur of protest. They didn't even ask, never mind confront.

Then there's the vaunted ESM from which we were to receive the billions refund of the 'legacy' bank-debt arising from the June 2012 statement - what has actually happened there? Well the fund has been established and Ireland has already contributed a €1bn share to that, which of course we also had to borrow and on which we are now paying interest. What have we received? How much 'legacy' debt relief? Not a single cent.

The actual legacy of this government, the legacy this generation leaves to those who will follow us, is debt piled on debt, 40 years of debt-slavery to our new European masters, all uncontested.

In Ballyhea and Charleville we have been campaigning since March 6th 2011 against this debt imposition, this sovereign surrender. This Sunday in Charleville at 10.30am, week 174, we're joined by three of our recently elected MEPs, Luke Ming Flanagan, Nessa Childers and Marian Harkin. New leaders, same cause; lions needed.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.