Press Release: The People’s Movement Launch Campaign for a No Vote
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press release
Thursday May 17, 2012 16:25
by People's Movement
The People’s Movement launched their campaign for a No Vote in the upcoming Fiscal Treaty at a press conference today in the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin.
Speaking at the launch, Thomas Pringle TD outlined the inadequacy of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), saying it would “sign-up the Irish people to the biggest socialisation of bank debt across Europe. Article 15 of the ESM states that ‘The ESM may decide to grant loans for the specific purpose of recapitalisation of the financial institutions of the ESM member’. Why the Government wants to sign us up to the biggest socialisation of bank debt across Europe is a mystery to me.”
The ESM Bill which was published last week, in effect, legalises our bank guarantee in Europe. If a member needs to recapitalise their banks, the funding will be lent to the member state and paid on to the bank – therefore the banking debt becomes the taxpayer debt.
Adding further, Deputy Pringle said “As it stands, the ESM could, if Ireland were to be subject to it, call on Ireland to make contributions of up to €11.1 billion in various forms of capital. In effect, it the ESM can direct the State to raise sovereign debt, give the money so raised to it and can decide where, when, whether and how it is spent. This is utterly nonsensical.”
Mick O'Reilly of Dublin Trades Council also spoke, saying the Government is not trying to frighten people in the referendum, but rather has stepped up a gear and is trying to terrify them.
Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan TD criticised the government’s subjective information leaflet which subtly suggest voting yes by insinuating there is only one way, adding “if I had not read anything else, I would be tempted to vote yes but thankfully I have.” Former MEP, Patricia McKenna and Robert Ballagh were both in agreement with Deputy Flanagan with Ballagh calling on the government to “withdraw this duplicitous document.”
Over the next two weeks, the People’s Movement will embark on a national campaign for a no vote consisting of; a series of public meetings across the country, the distribution of 120,000 newspapers and 500,000 leaflets.
The People's Movement campaigns against any measures that further develop the EU into a federal super-state and works to defend and enhance popular sovereignty, democracy and social justice in Ireland.
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4I have some time to spare but I like to read what I am handing out before I sign up! Is there any chance you could put up your leaflet on this site please so that I can read it and decide?
Check the website, plenty of info and pdfs of leaflets etc.
http://www.people.ie/english1.html
..the collective Marxist irrefutable argument for a Yes vote to the Frisk-All Tweetie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u8AgUXPpLM
Beware of the Sanity Clause ina the smallada print.
The PM has renewed its criticism of the EU imposed austerity programme, and called for a withdrawal from the euro and an end to pouring money down the drains of a failed banking system.
Austerity is the game as far as budget 2012 is concerned, and it’s a game imposed on us by our new rulers in Brussels and Strasbourg.
For this budget, like austerity programmes elsewhere, will not succeed in rescuing our economy – let alone “restore our economic sovereignty”. How could it when the decision is imposed on us to save the European banks that generated the crisis in the first place?
Yes, the purpose of the whole thing is to “strengthen economic governance throughout Europe” to use Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s own words. And now France’s Sarkozy and Germany’s Merkel have come clean and are openly calling for central fiscal and economic control over euro-zone budgets, taxes and public spending.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, of course, EU law-making powers from 2014 will be on a straight population basis, with Germany’s voting weight doubling from 8% to 16% and France’s from 8% to 12%, while Ireland’s is halved from 2% to less than 1%.
The new treaty they are now proposing will build on this arrangement, but strengthen the powers of Germany and France over the rest of the euro-zone through sheer weight of numbers.
And so intellectually bankrupt are the government parties, Fine Gael and Labour, together with the discredited Fianna Fáil rump, that they are meekly going along with it – and all to “save the euro”.
Yes the political establishment is willing to accept subordinating Ireland’s interests to those of “the euro area as a whole”, and to bow down to the “strict conditionality” that Germany insists on as the price of a new stability mechanism which will bleed us even further.
It is now clear that joining the euro opened us up to the catastrophe that is now upon us, and equally clear that the only way out is to stop pouring money down the drains of failed banks in a desperate effort to protect Europe’s rich, to leave the euro and use a new Irish currency – as Iceland has done – to restore growth and opportunity.
For that’s the choice. We face four more years of austerity without any real prospect of coming out of it at the end. Iceland, with its own currency, is already back to growth, and the hard times are just a lesson from the past.
Yes, we either sink with the euro or swim through admittedly difficult currents to a real
future based on using national sovereignty for our own interests.
For further information phone:
Frank Keoghan