IRISH TUC leader David Begg said on Saturday ‘It appears that the day of reckoning has arrived. The barbarians are at the gates.’
He was referring to the arrival of European Central Bank and IMF officials to open up and study the books of the Irish government, in order to draw up even more savage cuts as a condition for the receipt of a new 90bn euro loan, that is being forced on the Irish coalition regime.
The Irish government had not requested the loan. It is being made an offer that it cannot refuse in the best financial mafia style.
Its insistence that it has enough cash to last it to mid- July has been dismissed by the ECB, which is determined to prevent more bond yields rises that will make it impossible for Portugal and Spain to finance their deficit budgeting, and bring about the dreaded scenario where the euro goes bust, and the EU breaks apart.
Ireland is where the line in the sand is being drawn by the ECB for this battle.
The Irish are to be taught a lesson. The ECB and IMF are demanding total privatisation, tax rises and even more severe budget cuts, which they are going to remain on site to supervise and monitor.
They are to become the real Irish government and Ireland is to be occupied and run by them.
Meanwhile the French, German and UK bourgeoisie are lining up to put the boot into Ireland.
They are demanding that part of the deal must be that the Irish government raises its 12 per cent Corporation Tax to the level of the other EU states.
A large number of major companies have sited themselves in Ireland because of this lower rate of Corporation tax, and the EU bosses are determined to use this crisis to put an end to this economically embarrassing situation.
The crisis that now faces the Irish workers was discussed on Saturday at the TEEU trade union conference.
Attacking the government’s plan to take a further 6bn euros out of the economy, TEEU leader, Eamon Devoy said: ‘When the draconian measures being proposed are heaped on top of the 14.5bn euros cuts already implemented in the last three brutal budgets, life in Ireland will be unbearable.
‘What we are witnessing is a dismantling of social welfare provision and pensions for older people and the unemployed, health services for the sick and open access to higher education for our young, while creating immunity from pain for the builders, property speculators and hierarchy of the banking system who are entirely responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. Over 440,000 are now unemployed and another 45,000, many of them highly skilled, forced to emigrate.’
These measures and consequences do not include the measures that the ECB and the IMF are drawing up, as conditions for the 90bn euro loan. They will surely lead to a revolutionary leap in Ireland.
The union passed an emergency resolution calling for the resignation of the government and added: ‘If the government persists in clinging to power we call on the ICTU and other civil society organisations to launch a campaign of civil disobedience to force an election on a regime that has no principles and no objective beyond staying in office for as long as possible, even at the price of destroying what is left of our economy and our society.’
This response is completely inadequate.
The Irish trade unions must call an indefinite general strike to bring down the present coalition regime, and break the bourgeois mould by bringing in a revolutionary workers and small farmers government that will nationalise the major industries and the banks without compensation, declare null and void all of the banking debts, and bring in a socialist planned economy.
This is the only way forward.
