A LETTER TO TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY FROM THE BALLYHEA PROTESTERS

THE BALLYHEA & CHARLEVILLE BANK BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST GROUP

EASY DECISIONS, TOUGH DECISIONS

Dear Enda;

      EASY DECISIONS: 

• Hit the young – cut the education budget.
• Hit the old – cut home-help hours, attack the free-travel pass. 
• Hit the sick – cut the healthcare budget, frontline staff and services badly affected. 
• Hit the most vulnerable – cut the Special Needs budgets across the board. 
• Hit the poor – introduce universal tax after universal tax, from increased VAT to Home Tax

      TOUGH DECISIONS 

• Hit the political class – slash numbers, salaries, allowances, pensions at national & local level. 
• Hit the high earners – introduce (even temporarily) a third rate of tax. 
• Hit the multi-national corporations – increase (again, even temporarily) the tax rate. 
• Hit the overpaid in the upper echelons of the public sector – take on the Croke Park agreement and reduce numbers, salaries, pensions and conditions of those in upper and middle management. 
• Hit the Irish Financial Services Centre, one of the many centres in which international money-laundering and multi-national tax avoidance is enabled and where the only ‘markets’ that now seem to matter live and thrive – even a minimal tax on every transaction would be a major boost to our coffers. 
• Revisit and rewrite the licensing agreements for recovery of OUR oil and gas. 
• Invest in public infrastructure – broadband, water distribution, roads, railways, schools etc. 
• Reform the social welfare system – there HAS to be a floor, and current base-line rates shouldn’t be touched; there should also be a ceiling, a maximum going into any household. Further, there should also be real incentive for people to return to work, with benefit transition periods etc. 
• Take on the ECB. Oh yes, take on the ECB, expose them to the world for what they’ve done in forcing on Ireland a bank bailout policy that even the EuroZone leadership now acknowledges has failed, and demand repayment to this state of the €69.6bn (that’s over €15,000 for every resident), which that policy has so far cost us.

EASY DECISIONS, TOUGH DECISIONS. Since your election in late February 2011, despite all the get-tough pre-election promises and your hollow post-election spin, this Fine Gael/Labour coalition government has followed exactly the line of the failed Fianna Fáil/Green government that you succeeded, taken only the easy decisions.

This was NOT  a situation you ‘inherited’; an inheritance is a bequest, you requested this job – in fact you demanded this job. Well, on the back of the promises you made we gave it to you. Unless you were utterly incompetent you knew what you were getting into. Now, 82 weeks into the job, 82 weeks into our protest, we’re asking you – stop complaining, do your job.

The Ballyhea/Charleville Bank Bondholder Bailout Protest relates specifically to the final item in the above lists. For 82 weeks we’ve been marching against that ECB-enforced extortion of tens of billions from the Irish people. On October 1^st, for example, AIB (which we own 99.8%) pays an unguaranteed bond of €1bn. This year, 2012, the total bank bond payments will be just short of €20bn; next year it’s another €17bn, in the years 2012/13/14/15 it’s a total of over €55bn, the lifeblood being drained from the Irish economy through the banks, the people being crushed.

You say you’re taking the tough decisions – let’s see you take on the ECB. Get out from behind the coat-tails of Spain and Italy and do your own negotiating for your own people. If you’re unable to do that, do the honourable thing and leave the stage.

At the end of June you and your government announced a ‘seismic shift’, what we like to call the eruption of Mount Enda (you'll pardon us a little levity in these bleak times). Take that opening line from that statement and run with it -  We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns.

      That vicious circle, imposed on us in a blatant abuse of its own financial muscle by the ECB, has cost Ireland €69.6bn. On our behalf, on behalf of the people who elected you to fight our cause in Europe, demand that money back.

• Demand that the remaining Promissory Notes, all €30.6bn of which was printed to pay off bondholders in two zombie banks, not a cent of which went to the Irish people, be destroyed. 
• Demand that the billions destroyed from the two Notes already paid be reprinted. 
• Demand that the €21bn taken from our Pension Reserve Fund to bail out banks be repaid, either from the ESM or by allowing the Irish Central Bank print that money. 
• Demand that any outstanding bank-debt-related loan from Europe be written off, and all interest paid be returned. 
• Demand an end right across Europe to this odious practice of ‘socialising’ private bank debt – there is nothing more anti-social.

Do that, Enda, and you'll be doing the job you promised to do, the job you were elected to do; that was your mandate.

In the week in which 600,000 hours of home help hours are cut a bond of €600,000,000 is paid by Anglo; on next Monday week, October 1^st, AIB pays a bond – unsecured, unguaranteed – of €1bn; you can stand over this, these are the values for which you want to be remembered?

Stand up and fight Enda, stand up and fight for all of this and we’ll be behind you. Stay hiding behind the coat-tails of Mariano Rajoy and you don’t just dishonour your pledge, you dishonour your people.

SIGNED:

Frances O'Brien                                                       Pat O'Brien

Phillip Ryan                                                             Darragh Ryan

Pat Moloney                                                             Cathleen Quealey

Fiona Buckley                                                          Rob Fitzpatrick

Ellen O’Regan                                                          Ellen Morrissey

Diarmuid O'Flynn                                                    Diarmaid Ó Cadhla

David Walsh                                                            Eileen Walsh

Michael O'Brien                                                       Linda Bowles

Derek Griffin                                                           Lynette O’Farrell

Johnny Ryan                                                            Dave Ryan

Eithne Keating                                                         Dolly Madigan

EASY DECISIONS, TOUGH DECISIONS

EASY DECISIONS: 

• Hit the young – cut the education budget. 
• Hit the old – cut home-help hours, attack the free-travel pass. 
•  Hit the sick – cut the healthcare budget, frontline staff and services badly affected. 
•  Hit the most vulnerable – cut the Special Needs budgets across the board.
•  Hit the poor – introduce universal tax after universal tax, from increased VAT to Home Tax

     TOUGH DECISIONS 

• Hit the political class – slash numbers, salaries, allowances, pensions at national & local level.  
• Hit the high earners – introduce (even temporarily) a third rate of tax. 
• Hit the multi-national corporations – increase (again, even temporarily) the tax rate. 
• Hit the overpaid in the upper echelons of the public sector – take on the Croke Park agreement and reduce numbers, salaries, pensions and conditions of those in upper and middle management.
• Hit the Irish Financial Services Centre, one of the many centres in which international money-laundering and multi-national tax avoidance is enabled and where the only ‘markets’ that now seem to matter live and thrive – even a minimal tax on every transaction would be a major boost to our coffers. 
• Take on the big oil exploration companies, rewrite the licenses for oil/gas exploration, our oil and gas.
• Reform the social welfare system – there HAS to be a floor, and current base-line rates shouldn’t be touched; there should also be a ceiling, a maximum going into any household. Further, there should also be real incentive for people to return to work, with benefit transition periods etc.Invest in public infrastructure – broadband, water distribution, roads, railways, schools… 
• Biggest challenge of all - take on the ECB. Oh yes, take on the ECB, expose them to the world for what they’ve done in forcing on Ireland a bank bailout policy that even the EuroZone leadership now acknowledges has failed, and demand repayment to this state of the €69.6bn (that’s over €15,000 for every resident), which that policy has so far cost us.

Easy decisions, tough decisions. Since their election in late February 2011, and despite all their tough pre-election promises and their hollow post-election spin, this Fine Gael/Labour coalition government has followed exactly down the line of the failed Fianna Fáil/Green government they succeeded and taken only the easy decisions.

The Ballyhea/Charleville Bank Bondholder Bailout Protest relates specifically to the final item in the above lists. For 80 weeks we’ve been marching against that ECB-enforced extortion of tens of billions from the Irish people. On October 1^st, for example, AIB (which we own 99.8%) pays an unguaranteed bond of €1bn. This year, 2012, the total will be just short of €20bn; next year it’s another €17bn. 

Enda, Michael and the rest say they’re taking the tough decisions – let’s see them take on the ECB. This Sunday, September 16^th, week 81, timed to coincide with the reconvening of the Dáil, we begin a three-day Crusade to demand that Enda Kenny do just that. We would appreciate support along the route, which is as follows:

SUNDAY:

11.30am: Ballyhea, meet as usual at the church car-park and do the usual march;

12 noon: Charleville, meet at the Library Plaza, do the usual 15-minute march;

1pm:       Adare, meet at Dunraven Arms, 15-minute march;

2pm:       Limerick, meet at the Crescent, march to end of O’Connell Street.

MONDAY

10.45am: Nenagh, meet at the Courthouse, 15-minute march towards Dublin;

11.30am: Roscrea, meet in the square in front of AIB bank, 15-minute march out Dublin road;

12.30pm: Portlaoise, meet at roundabout near Garda station, 15-minute march towards Dublin;

2pm:       Kildare, meet near Bride St/Dublin St. junc., march towards Dublin;

2.30pm: Newbridge, meet near College Park/Main Street junc., march towards Dublin

3.30pm: Naas, meet in centre of town, Newbridge Road/Main Street junction, march towards Dublin;

5.00pm: Bray, meet at the Civic Offices beside Mermaid Arts Centre on Main St., march at 5.30.

7.30pm: Dublin, meet at O’Connell Bridge, march to GPO and issue our own Proclamation.

TUESDAY

1pm: Begin to gather at Garden of Remembrance.

2pm: March to the Dáil, meet Enda Kenny or Michael Noonan, or if not, hand in a letter demanding

         they stop repressing and start representing the people who elected them.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

IRELAND 2012 AND ITS VALUES

Last week, making headlines in all our media outlets, it was announced that the HSE was making a cut of around 600,000 hours to home help for the remaining months of 2012,  part of the HSE’s efforts to effect savings of €130m. There was outrage, and rightly so, and a few days later the government was forced to change its plans. Now, rather than just cutting the most needy to the bone the HSE will also have to look to shedding some fat. Not a full victory but still, people power prevailing.

On Monday of this week Anglo Irish Bank (as it was, is and ever will be to those of us who refuse to acknowledge it as anything else) paid a bond of €600m – that’s €1,000 for every hour the HSE was so blithely going to cut from home help; on October 1^st AIB – another bank we own – will pay a bond of €1bn. That’s €1,600,000,000 in bonds we didn’t issue being paid in just four weeks by two banks we now own, 12 times what the HSE is attempting to save, yet in our national media not a word. Why not? Since March 2011, when we began our protest march in Ballyhea, I’ve been grabbling with that question; €24bn in bank bonds later and I’m grappling no more – I just don’t have an answer.

Turning the corner?

The bank debt burden is a far bigger issue than anything else we face at the moment but where is the outrage, where is the people power? At what stage will we all make the connection between all those cuts and all those bank bond payments? At what stage will people revolt against the €69.6bn additional debt that has been forced on us by the ECB in cooperation with this government, our national media (with just a few brave and honourable exceptions) colluding through its silence? That’s a debt of over €15,000 for every single person in this state – is that not worth protesting, is that not worth highlighting?

‘These are tough times,’ they repeatedly tell us, as if we don’t know, ‘We are taking the tough decisions.’ Lies. How tough is it to take from the weakest and most vulnerable? Because that is exactly what this coward and craven government is doing. But take on the ECB? Take on Angela Merkel? Take on their own, the overpaid overpensioned political class; take on our own vested interests in this country; take on the high-earners; take on the ludicrous Croke Park Agreement and the fat and overpaid upper Civil Service area; take on those like the multinationals who are paying less than their fair share into the public coffers; take on any or all of those, even if only for the few years we would then need to clean up this mess? No my friends, this government is NOT taking the tough decisions.

What we have in Ireland of 2012 is a government whose priorities are perverse. The good of the people, the will of the people? It’s good to pay out tens of billions in failed bonds to failed large-scale financial gamblers while cutting from the old (home help), the young (education), the most vulnerable (the likes of St Joseph's)? This is the will of the people?

Is this where we want to be? Are these the values you want for Ireland 2012? Is this the way you want your country governed? I don’t. 

For 79 weeks now in Ballyhea a group of us have been protesting all this injustice, joined after a few months by a group from nearby Charleville. Every Sunday morning we meet, 11.30am, alternating between the two parishes, and take to the street. No slogans, no chants, just a short, dignified march by a small but fiercely determined group of very ordinary people.

We are non-party-political, we don’t espouse any –ism, we simply object to this enslavement of people to bail out failed banks and their failed bondholders. Our original intention was that every parish, village, town and city in Ireland could duplicate what we’re doing and hold their own march every Sunday, at around the same time. That can still be done. A few phone-calls among like-minded people, a banner proclaiming who ye are and what ye’re doing (BALLYHEA SAYS NO TO BONDHOLDER BAILOUT is ours), take your courage in your hands, and off you go.

Direct action, as taken against the home-help cuts, that is what is needed now. If you object to what’s happening, then protest with us, march with us. If you can’t make it on your own then join us in Ballyhea this Sunday, or at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin where we’ll be holding a march to Croke Park, meeting at 11.30am at both venues. You've been silent long enough.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

TAKING ON THE ECB

On Sunday last the noted economist Colm McCarthy had an article in the Sunday Independent in which he suggested the Irish government should sue the ECB for the money we have been forced into sinking into our banks.

On Sunday last also, week 77 of our on-going protest against those actions by the ECB, the Ballyhea/Charleville regular Sunday morning march took place but with a twist – a few of us who couldn't be in Charleville instead held a simultaneous march in Dublin.

                The Charleville Brigade                                      The Dublin Branch

With due respect to the man, Colm was merely stating the obvious. In fact, not alone did the ECB exceed its remit in what was done to Ireland, it went beyond the bounds of the law – blackmail and extortion, which is what has been happening on an on-going basis to us since the ECB became involved in our finances, is illegal in any civilised jurisdiction, and has been for millennia.

Of course, then, we should sue the ECB, that’s without question; there IS a question, however – for how much? ‘Somewhere north of €20bn’ is the estimate Colm put on it on the excellent Tonight With Vincent Browne TV3 show this week – with due respect again Colm, not nearly enough.

Blackmailed by the ECB, we have thus far sunk €69.6bn into our banks, an additional debt burden which in the first instance prompted ‘the markets’ to force us out of the club but an additional debt burden which is now crushing us – the vicious circle between banks and sovereign mentioned in the opening line of the recent hugely significant EZ Leaders’ statement.

Our government must now demand, on our behalf, the return of ALL that money. It can be done as follows: a) Burn all remaining Promissory Notes; b) in a local Quantitative Easing measure, allow our Central Bank to reprint the €6bn already destroyed to satisfy the Promissory Notes of 2011 and 2012; c) through a similar Quantitative Easing measure, allow our Central Bank to print the €21bn plundered from the National Pension Reserve Fund and handed over to the banks and thence to the bank bondholders; d) all bank-related debt to the various ECB funds to be written off; e) all bank-debt-related sums so far paid to the various ECB funds (including interest) to be repaid.

That’s our first fight, that’s Ireland’s fight, but it’s not the end of this war. Even as we’re battling to get back the money that was forced from us we must join forces with all the nations of the EC and do what the EZ Leaders themselves – again going back to that statement – have already agreed, break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns. That, they said, was imperative.

Right across Europe we must work together to break the power of the ECB, to put an end to its odious and failed policy of using public money to bail out failed private banks and their failed private bondholders. This isn’t even a question of forcing those bondholders to suffer their own losses, it’s a question of allowing them suffer those losses. That’s how their own system works, that’s capitalism, that’s commerce. Warning: your investment may fall as well as rise – we’re all familiar with that line, no? What the ECB did in Ireland, what it continues to do, is an attempt to dam the flow of that river. We need to now slowly dismantle that dam, before the whole damned thing bursts and swamps us all.

This Sunday, week 78, march with us, Ballyhea Says No To Bank Bondholder Bailout; meet at Ballyhea church car-park 11.30am, short and dignified protest with neither chant nor slogan.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.