From:
The Ballyhea/Charleville bank bondholder bailout protest group
To:
Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank.
Dear Mr Draghi,
For several years the
ECB has been abusing its financial muscle and forcing a weak Irish government
to assume for the Irish people a debt burden that is not ours. In doing so the
ECB has interrupted the current of commerce and has corrupted the normal
process of capitalism.
When the Irish economy went up in flames in 2008 it
burned everyone, with one glaring exception – those whose billions had fuelled
those flames. The banks and financial institutions who had so recklessly loaned
their excess funds into a rapidly-inflating economy, their judgement clouded by
their greed, have so far not even been singed.
The ECB are the ones
who have dictated that those bondholders in the failed Irish banks shouldn’t
suffer their own losses, that instead we – the Irish people – should assume all
that debt. We are here to say otherwise and unlike our elected representatives,
we are not here to beg. In all natural justice, we are here to DEMAND the
following:
1.
An immediate end to all the forced
payments of bank bonds, those bonds then to be treated as they should have been
treated from the beginning using the normal rules of capitalism and commerce
under which they were first negotiated.
2.
The immediate destruction of all
remaining Promissory Notes and the money printed by the Irish Central Bank to
facilitate the payment of those failed bonds in those failed banks to be left
in circulation.
3.
Permission granted to the Irish Central
Bank to reprint the two instalments of those Promissory Notes already paid,
totalling over €6bn.
4.
The ECB to make good the €17bn that was
taken from our National Pension Reserve Fund at your behest and used to
‘recapitalise’ our bust banks.
5.
The ECB to make good the €5bn that was
taken from NAMA for like purpose.
6.
The write-down of all money borrowed
from you, the ECB, by the Irish Exchequer to fund those bust banks and pay off
the failed bonds.
7.
The return of all interest paid to date
on those bank-debt borrowings.
We are a proud people,
Mr Draghi, we WILL pay – in full – all our own sovereign debt. But that bank
debt is not ours, was never ours, will never rightfully be ours. We demand now
that you end this imposition and allow our country and its people to properly and
quickly recover.
SIGNED:
Diarmuid O'Flynn
Fiona Buckley-Fitzpatrick
Rob Fitzpatrick
Cathleen Queally-Moloney
Pat Moloney
Phil Ryan
Frances O'Brien
Pat O'Brien
Diarmaid O Cadhla
Donncha O Briain
Vicky Donnelly
Richard Chapman
Damian Moylan
Hugh Mellerick
Lynette O'Donoghue
