AFTER IRISH WATER, WHAT NEXT?

A BIGGER TRAVESTY THAN IRISH WATER

My friends, those hundreds of thousands of you on the streets for the past several weeks protesting the lies and spin surrounding the setting up of Irish Water; we have holed this company below the waterline and it is sinking, fast.

When we're done with this righteous cause, however, there is another even bigger, even more outrageous wrong that awaits your anger, that awaits your resolution – big and outrageous enough to blow the doors off anything you've known so far.

It is the ongoing cost of the bailout of Irish banks, of the bailout of the most toxic of all those banks particularly - Anglo Irish Bank. This government and its spinning media would love you all to believe that the bank-debt is a dead story, a done deal, dead and buried. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I'm not just talking about the estimated €1.6bn we’ll be paying in bank-debt interest this year (and growing).

A BROKE COUNTRY BORROWING BILLIONS TO DESTROY – THE NEW NOONAN SCHEDULE

As a result of the Michael Noonan Promissory Notes ‘deal’ of February 2013, before this year is over the Governor of the Irish Central Bank, Patrick Honahan, will sell a sovereign bond of €500m. What happens to that money?

Immediately the bond is sold we start paying interest on that €500m; immediately also, however, Patrick will press a button in his high office in the Central Bank and destroy that €500m, every cent.

But that’s not the end of it. 

In 2038, the bondholder who loaned us those hundreds of millions will come a-calling to whoever is then Governor of the Central Bank, thanking us for the 24 years of interest payments and now looking for the principal to be paid, the €500m.

Kind of mind-boggling, isn’t it, almost unimaginable? Just think of all the cuts and stealth taxes that have been imposed over the last seven years, just think of what we could do with that €500m. But we destroy it.

Anglo Irish Bank has now been wound up, which should have happened back in 2010 when those Promissory Notes were first issued. The EU authorities, however, the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) especially, feared contagion and the possible collapse of much bigger European banks if that were allowed happen, so in collusion with the then Irish government they kept those bank doors open, looped the loop through their own rules and allowed the Irish Central Bank print €31.9bn to bail out the creditors of Anglo (€25.3bn) and to a lesser extent Irish Nationwide Building Society (€5.3bn) and EBS (a 'mere' €0.25bn)

Now the ECB is insisting that the Irish Central Bank must take that entire €31.9bn back out of circulation. We don’t have it of course – as a nation we’re not just broke, we’re over €200bn in debt – so we have to borrow it.

Thus the bonds, thus the billions being taken in, thus the destruction of those billions to satisfy the ECB, thus the interest being paid by the coming generations of Irish people, thus the principal having to be repaid decades hence.

 

Billions? Yes, billions, because that €500m bond is just the first of a litany of shame. Not our shame – Michael Noonan’s shame, the shame of all who voted into existence this 40-yr debt burden, four decades of debt-slavery for the Irish people.

THE ROLL OF DISHONOUR

This year, we borrow and destroy €500m, as described above; next year, 2015, same again - €500m bond sold, those hundreds of millions immediately destroyed, interest immediately being paid to the new bondholder, then in 2038, that bondholder coming back for the full €500m.

That’s a billion euro borrowed and destroyed, yet it’s only the start.

PLEASE STAY WITH THIS, PLEASE READ AND ABSORB, BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING FEW SHORT PARAGRAPHS DON’T JUST DWARF ALL THAT’S HAPPENING TO US, IT UNDERLINES IT, IT DEFINES IT.

For five years, and following the schedule set out in the Noonan deal, every year from 2014 to 2018 (incl) the Central Bank will sell a bond of €500m, then destroy that money;

For a further five years, again per the Noonan schedule, every year from 2019 to 2023 (incl) the Central Bank will sell a bond of €1,000m (that’s a billion a year), then destroy that money;

For a further eight years, still per Noonan schedule, every year from 2024 to 2031 (incl) the Central Bank will sell a bond of €2,000m (that’s right – two billion a year), then destroy that money.

Finally, in 2032 the last of those Promissory Notes bonds is sold, €1,500m taken in and destroyed, a total of €25,000m - €25bn, to go with the €3bn already being held ready for sale from the 2012 Promissory Note deal.

This is fact, every word, on the public record. Who told us? None other than Patrick Honahan himself, though he did follow up by trying to explain that the money he’s ‘extinguishing’ isn’t real; the interest we’ll be paying though is real, very real, as is the interest we're paying right now; the billions in principal that will be paid is real, though Patrick himself will be long gone from the Central Bank by that stage of course.

SPINNERS OF LIES, WEAVERS OF HALF-TRUTHS

You were told the Promissory Notes are ‘gone’ and the 'savings of €20bn over the next ten years' have been loudly and regularly trumpeted, even to this day.

You were NOT told that that the €25bn Promissory Notes debt still remained, every cent;

You were NOT told that Michael Noonan’s ‘deal’ was just a refinancing job, that what he did was lift the burden off his own government for the remaining years of their term (2012/13/14/15/16) and through the new payment schedule, transfer it to the shoulders of future generations;

You were NOT told that the €20bn of ‘savings’ over the next ten years would become over €60bn of payments in the following 30 years. All told, expect the original €32bn bailout of the European big-bank creditors of Anglo/Irish Nationwide/EBS to cost us upwards of €80bn in the next 40 years, an average of around €2bn per year.

If you're a parent, would you do that? Would you take a very arguable debt (totally illegal, Noonan himself admitted on national radio just days after his ‘deal’) and rather than confront the money-lender on it, take out another loan for the full amount but set up the repayment schedule such that the bulk of the burden would be lifted from yourself and transferred to your kids and to their kids? Because that is the legacy Michael Noonan is leaving our kids on our behalf – debt-slavery to the EU.

BURN THE BONDS, NOT THE BILLIONS

Unless we do as we’ve done for the water charge, unless we take to the streets and demand an end to it, demand that those bonds are not sold, demand that this Promissory Notes debt should NOT be imposed on the Irish people, not on this generation, not on any generation, then we are party to it.

We can stop it, we MUST stop it. In Ballyhea, as of today, Monday December 1^st 2014,  we’ve been marching for 196 weeks against this injustice. Even as we try to force this government into a full climb-down on the inequitable water charge, I implore you all – please turn your attention also to this.

Those bonds must be must not be sold, those billions must not be destroyed, else, like Michael Noonan and all those who voted to impose this coward legacy, we too will have sold out our own children.

December 28^th 2014, that will be week 200 of Ballyhea Says No, long supported now by Charleville Says No. Join us, make it a big one.