There is a major imbalance in Ireland’s contribution to the
current Europe-wide crisis. To correct that imbalance, and after consultation
with several experts in the field, the Ballyhea & Charleville group, part
of the growing ‘Ireland says NO!’ campaign, now intend to meet both the ECB and
the EU to propose the following:
- To the ECB: Write off the €28.1bn in sovereign bonds currently held by our Central Bank in lieu of the Promissory Notes (€25bn + €3.1bn for the 2012 note), Notes that were issued in 2010 to cover a flagrant abuse of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance fund when €31bn was pumped in to two already insolvent institutions, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, abuse the ECB itself approved;
- To the EU: Through the ESM, restore to the Irish Exchequer a) the €3.1bn already destroyed on the basis of those Promissory Notes, b) the €20.7bn taken from our National Pension Reserve Fund to bail out those banks and c) the remaining €12.2bn or so borrowed from the various emergency funds to bail out the Irish banks.
- To the EC: Propose a measure to impose a levy on the finance industry that will see the billions their recklessness has cost the peoples of Europe restored to those balance sheets, perhaps that levy going directly to the ESM for redistribution to those countries affected.
The first proposal will ease the long-term bank-debt burden,
the second will ease the current situation, give us money to invest in
job-creation and thus enable us grow our way out of this recession, the third
will force retribution from those whose recklessness caused the crisis.
MEETING WITH ECB/EU
To discuss these proposals we are looking for a meeting with
the ECB (in the case of the first proposal) and the EU (in the case of the
second). As we take this fight to Europe we are calling for the backing of
every TD and Senator, of every Council and Corporation, of every MEP, and
especially of our President himself; we are also asking for the backing of
every union, of IBEC, the various Chambers of Commerce and ISME, of every
sporting organisation, of every national organisation great and small.
We would appreciate especially the support of our media, all
forms local and national.
EXPERTS CONSULTED (only on 1 & 2 above – 3 is a variation on suggestion
from Stephen Donnelly TD and also the Debt Justice Action/Anglo Not Our Debt
group):
Dr Constantin
Gurdgiev, UCD & TCD; Seamus Coffey, UCC; Jagdip Singh (Namawinelake).
BACKGROUND
In January 1999 the EU launched a new currency, the Euro. It
was a seriously flawed design, carrying within it the seeds of its own
destruction. Included in those flaws, and highlighted in an
article by Belgian economist Paul de Grauwe from the Financial Times of a
year earlier, was
- a lack of foresight of what might happen when countries and their banks suddenly found themselves with access to an unlimited supply of previously expensive billions;
- a lack of oversight, no-one applying the brakes to the destructive and reckless rush of capital from the core to the periphery;
- an absence of any structure in the event of emergency.
Within eight years the Euro crashed, taking with it a whole
array of banks and causing devastation in the economies of several Eurozone
countries. One of the major causes of the systemic imbalances built up over
2000-2007 period across the Eurozone was the monetary policy mismatch (summary here
by Dr Constantin Gurdgiev).
SHARING THE
RESPONSIBILITY BUT ALSO SHARING THE BURDEN
Those of us in what is now known as the Eurozone who signed
up to the new currency and all its myriad design flaws share responsibility for
the chaos it has caused. We must also share the cost, the various financial
institutions who engaged in the reckless lending especially so.
In Ireland, we have been burdened with a massively
disproportionate share of that cost. How much? So far, and excluding the
contribution from NAMA (set up to take over the major bad debts of the Irish
banks), the Irish bank bailout amounts to €64,100,000,000. That’s
€14,244/person, or approx. €60,000/family.
FIRST IN THE LINE OF
FIRE
When the crisis hit Europe, Ireland was first in the firing
line. Lacking any guidelines or structures from Europe, or any supervisory
oversight, the then Irish government took unilateral action to save its banking
system, the infamous ‘blanket bank guarantee’ of September 2008. It was
ill-advised in every sense but all of that advice – and the subsequent decision
– hinged on the misinformation given by the banks themselves that theirs was
merely a temporary problem of liquidity, when in fact several were already
insolvent (see page iii section ‘Consensus’ for the role international
and EU institutions played in driving unsustainable risk build-up in Ireland).
The Guarantee was issued in the environment where any real advice or direction
from either the ECB or the EU was lacking, with Irish authorities left on their
own to deal with the acute crisis.
EU/ECB POLICY
Regardless of the problems emanating from that guarantee,
however, and the EU’s negative response to it, from the outset of the crisis
the stated policy of the EU/ECB itself was to bail out every bank and every
bondholder – there would be no ‘haircuts’, no ‘burden-sharing’. And so it was
that as the years passed, as more and more austerity has been piled on the
Irish people, bond after failed bond in bank after failed bank in the Irish
system was paid in full.
That policy flies in the face of all natural justice, has
resulted in a situation where the poorest in society are subsidising the
richest, bailout of the rich by the poor. This policy also contradicts EU
responses adopted in subsequent bailout packages in Greece and Cyprus.
With that in mind, we are now taking our case directly to
Europe.
WHO WE ARE
As of May 10th 2013
As of May 10th 2013
- BALLYHEA SAYS NO (115 weeks)
- CHARLEVILLE SAYS NO (100 weeks)
- IRELAND SAYS NO (15 weeks).
Our campaign began on March 6th 2011, the weekend
after the last General Election when Enda Kenny, even before he had met with
Eamon Gilmore to form the new government, announced that burden-sharing with
the banks wasn’t going to happen.
Apart from the weekly march, in the past 115 weeks we’ve
been to the Dáil thrice, to Brussels twice, to the ECB HQ in Frankfurt once,
all at our own expense.
We are individual citizens exercising our civic right, our civic duty, to fight for our families, our communities, our country. This massive debt has been imposed on us without consultation with us, without anyone even asking for our approval. We repudiate that debt.
We hear of all the Irish/EU/ECB rules/regulations/laws protecting the banks/bondholders/financial institutions; where are the rules and regulations and laws protecting the people? How did we end up with a bank-debt of €69.7bn imposed on us?
We are individual citizens exercising our civic right, our civic duty, to fight for our families, our communities, our country. This massive debt has been imposed on us without consultation with us, without anyone even asking for our approval. We repudiate that debt.
We hear of all the Irish/EU/ECB rules/regulations/laws protecting the banks/bondholders/financial institutions; where are the rules and regulations and laws protecting the people? How did we end up with a bank-debt of €69.7bn imposed on us?
Individually we all have our different political beliefs (or
none!); collectively we are a-political. We are not economic experts and don’t
pretend to be; in gender, age-group and employment status we’re just a
cross-section of Irish society, with a single, united agenda - lift this unjust
bank-debt burden from our shoulders. We won’t rest til it’s done.
