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.

WEEK 76 - TAKING THE BALLYHEA PROTEST TO DUBLIN

August 14th 2012

Emerging from cavernous Croke Park at around nine o’clock last Sunday evening, all the All-Ireland hurling semi-final work for the Irish Examiner tucked up and put to bed (that’s ‘tucked’ up!), I was heading to my car when hailed by a guy along the way. He had been there for a while he told me, waiting for me to emerge, knowing I would have to pass where he was parked because he had noted my car further on with all the ‘Ballyhea Says No To Bondholder Bailout’ stickers.

He was waiting so he could apologise, apologise for a remark he had made several hours earlier when passing our little group as we were getting our picture taken in front of Croke Park, having marched from the Garden of Remembrance.

It wasn’t his true form, he explained, wasn’t his true feeling either; far from disparaging what we were doing he respected us, even supported us in principle. I accepted the apology of course, fully and without reservation.

Truth be told, though I had heard the comments and noted the speaker it hadn’t bothered me, not in the slightest. Over the last 76 weeks those of us who have been marching every week in protest at the extortion of tens of billions of euro from us by EU/ECB have become used to every kind of criticism, have become inured to every kind of disparaging remark.

This isn’t to say we’ve become pros at this protesting lark – far from it. We’re all so far out of our comfort-zones now that we’re going to need assimilation courses to get back to normality when all this is finally over. Many times over the past 16 months my guts have been in knots as I waited for our next move to unfold – sit-down protests on the main Cork/Limerick road, Run To The Dáil, a week-long bread-and-water fast, the ECB HQ protest in Frankfurt. Last Sunday in Dublin was no exception. 

Unable to make the Ballyhea protest because of the All-Ireland hurling semi-final in Croke Park (for those who don’t know, I work for the sport section of the Irish Examiner), I had decided at the last minute to bring a branch of the protest to Dublin, meet at the Garden of Remembrance at 11.30am, the same time they were meeting in Ballyhea, then set off at noon for Croke Park. At that appointed hour, I can tell ye, 11.30am, the Garden of Remembrance was a hell of a lonely place!

A few people did turn up, and I'm so grateful to them – so should be the whole country. We marched, got a lot of bemused looks, a few shouts of support, and yes, some disparaging words. But in spite of it all we march, because we know, now more than ever, that our cause is just.

At the end of June and to much fanfare, our media proclaimed a great deal for Ireland – the Eurozone leaders had met and from that summit was issued a statement which began with these immortal words: ‘We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns.’ This is an admission that the policy which had been forced on Ireland hadn’t worked, had in fact seen us caught in this ‘vicious circle between banks and sovereigns’.

In the next few weeks, to absolutely no fanfare, that vicious circle continues, a €600,000,000 bond from Anglo on September 3rd, then a billion-euro bond – yes, that’s €1,000,000,000, would fund a lot of gold medals – on October 1^st, this one from AIB. We own both those banks, that’s our money, and this scandal is still going on.

That’s why we march, that’s why we risk derision, even from our own friends and neighbours. We don’t ‘cod’ ourselves about either our size or our impact but neither do we care; some day everyone else will awaken to what the EU/ECB is doing to us, the people of this little nation. It's not just wrong, it's not just bullying, it's criminal; it is extortion, it is larceny, it is blackmail, tens of billions of public funds (€69.6bn so far) being diverted to bail out failed private banks and their failed private bondholders. It’s a crime being perpetrated by the EU/ECB against one of its smallest member states at a time when that state is at its most vulnerable.

This Sunday, Aug 19th 2012, we’ll meet again at the Garden of Remembrance, 11.30am, in solidarity with the march back home in Ballyhea and Charleville, and we’ll march again, at noon, to Croke Park. We wouldn't mind a few extra with us, however, wouldn't mind at all!

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

WEEK 75 - The flyer; feel free to print and post!

Ballyhea/Charleville Bondholder Bailout Protest

Upcoming Event

This Sunday 5^th August at 11:30am

Town Plaza, Charleville

              

              Mr Stephen Donnelly TD                         Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev

To mark the 75^th Week of Protest Marches against the ongoing payments to bondholders we are delighted to announce we will be joined by Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev (Economist) and Mr. Stephen Donnelly (Ind. TD Wicklow) amongst others, who will discuss the inequity of the payment of those bonds. We will commence proceedings with our usual short march and then move to The Charleville Park Hotel for speeches and discussion.

PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR IRELAND 

HELP SHAPE IRELAND'S FUTURE 

JOIN US

WEEK 75 MEDIA NOTIFICATION

Ballyhea

Charleville

Co. Cork

Aug 2nd 2012

Ref: WEEK 75 BALLYHEA/CHARLEVILLE BANK BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST MARCH

Dear Sir/Madam;

It began on March 6^th 2011, the weekend after the General Election when Fine Gael leader and prospective Taoiseach Enda Kenny indicated, even before he had formed a government, that he would be going back on his pre-election promise of burden-sharing with the bondholders; 75 weeks later it’s still going strong.

Ballyhea is a rural parish in north Cork on the main Cork/Limerick road, has a population of around 1,000 souls, Charleville the nearest town, has a population of around 3,500. Sixteen weeks into our protest a group from Charleville followed our example and began marching in the town; several weeks after that we joined forces and since then we’ve alternated the march between the two centres, every second Sunday in each place. This week it’s the turn of Charleville, gathering at the Library Plaza at 11.30am.

We will be joined this week by well-known economist Dr Constantin Gurdgiev (his third march) and by highly respected Independent Wicklow TD Stephen Donnelly (his first outing), along with several other high-profile individuals. After the march, which lasts for only about 15 minutes, Constantin and Stephen will host a discussion at the Park Hotel, on the outskirts of the town.

With the recent statement from the Leaders’ Summit, ‘We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns’, the EU has admitted that its policy of the past few years as forced on Ireland, the conversion of private bank debt to sovereign debt, was wrong, has to be changed.  In Ballyhea/Charleville, we’ve been protesting that wrong for 75 weeks. 

This admission by the EU is welcome, very welcome. However – and this point is critical – it doesn’t right the wrong, it merely acknowledges it. We can’t undo the massive damage done to the Irish economy and to Ireland’s reputation as a result of the EU/ECB policy over the past few years; we must do our damnedest, however, to get back the billions we were blackmailed into  pumping into our failed banks to enable them to pay the failed bonds (a practice, by the way, that continues unabated - €19bn in bonds from Irish banks this year alone).

So we march, 75 weeks now. It’s not Olympic-standard endurance but we are in search of gold, our gold, and until we see this wrong righted, until we see action as opposed to rhetoric, we’ll continue to march. We invite anyone in the area to please join with us this Sunday. This is not just Ballyhea’s fight, nor just Charleville’s fight – it’s YOUR fight, it’s everyone’s fight, right across Europe.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.