Madam, – In recent days, we have heard about the vast amounts of money that the Government has accepted to pay on the taxpayers’ behalf, but do taxpayers really know how much they’re paying? Allow me to contextualise. The state of California recently announced a budget deficit of €15.3 billion ($20.7 bn), and has a population of nearly 37 million. That works out at nearly €414 worth of debt for every man, woman and child living there. Finance experts have deemed it a disgrace.
In contrast, Ireland has a deficit of €79.3 billion and a population of 4.5 million. This works out at about €17,772 for every man, woman and child in the country. For someone on a 40-hour week at minimum wage, it would take just short of a year to pay off his/her share and about 4,390,840 years to pay off the whole thing. Better get working, lads. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – When systems are broken, like the ones that we’re seeing in Ireland, it’s an opportunity for invention and for innovation. It’s an opportunity to truly build a country where we can extend services to all those who need them. We have dignity as a nation and that starts with making choices and decisions for ourselves. We owe it to ourselves to do this.
If we want to bring down unemployment in a sustainable way, bailing out the banks and socialising this vast debt will not do it. We need to create a raft of new companies as soon as possible. We’ve got to get more Irish people working again for their own dignity – and to generate the rising incomes and wealth we need to pay for existing entitlements, as well as all the new investments we’ll need to make in healthcare and infrastructure.
Good-paying jobs don’t result from bank bailouts. They come from start-ups. New companies are created by inspired risk-takers. Reform of, and investment in, our education system is key.
I cannot see why there is no initiative to create a staggered default of the bondholders’ debt – not Irish Government debt – over a few years and liquidate all the assets of the banks so as to raise money towards this. This was risk capital and before the bank guarantee these bondholders had no guaranteed return. Thousands of bank workers would lose their jobs, but the effect of not doing this would be far more damaging to the entire country. – Is mise,
Madam, – The Minister for Finance claims that to default on the debt to the subordinated bondholders would undermine our ability to borrow and affect our credit rating.
In effect, he is equating the good name and word of four million Irish citizens and their promise to repay any future loans (something which we, as a State, have never failed to do in the past) with that of the now non-existent reputation of those who ran Anglo Irish Bank, among others.
This is an outrageous slur on the good name of Ireland and its citizens.
Bond holders are the vultures of the financial prairie. They rely on the sweat of others to survive. In times of plenty, they do well – otherwise they starve. To repay them is simply wrong. As happened with Allied Irish Bank on more than one occasion in the past, it would appear that the Government was panicked into making this decision in the autumn of 2008.
Will we ever learn? There is still time to reverse this madness. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Considering the enormous financial burden being imposed, without a mandate, upon the public in relation to the re-capitalisation of Anglo Irish, and Irish Nationwide banks, among others, it is reasonable to argue that legal protocol should be set aside, and the identities of the key bondholders of these bank’s revealed.
Suspicion must be endemic that the Government’s obsession with re-capitalising Nationwide – and especially Anglo – has nothing to do with sound econ-omic judgment in the national interest, but is designed to protect vested interests; including those of members of the Government.
Banks have gone within the EU without a scintilla of catastrophe descending upon the heads of the public; if Nationwide and Anglo go the sky is hardly going to fall down upon our heads.
No convincing econ-omic rationale has been presented in favour of re-capitalising these banks, apart from carefully orchestrated scare-mongering tactics from a minority of media hacks. It would be far better to let these miscreant, and parasitic banks die. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Frank McNally (An Irishman’s Diary, April 3rd) questions whether the figure on the side of the Treasury Building is climbing up or down. I think after last week it’s obvious she is hanging on for dear life! – Yours, etc,