Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
14 November 2013
The Communist Party of Ireland today warned Irish workers not to fall for the latest ruse by the bankrupt political establishment with its announcement that this failed state will leave the “bail-out programme”—which is in fact a restructuring programme—by 15 December without a “precautionary credit line.”
This will not mean an end to any of the current or planned cuts in health, education, or social welfare, nor end the drive for privatisation. Nor will it prevent the need for continued cuts in the future. The servicing of the debt is costing the Irish people nearly €9 billion per year—similar to the annual education budget. Austerity will be a permanent feature of the lives of working families far into the future.
Debt has become the principal political means of strengthening external mechanisms of control by the EU Commission—dominated by Germany—not only of this state but of all member-states and in particular the other heavily indebted peripheral states. The capacity of the peoples throughout the European Union to democratically affect political and economic changes is being rapidly diminished. Democracy is being hollowed out.
It is simply not in the interests of the Irish political and economic establishment to assert independent actions: their interests lie in ensuring that the current process continues and deepens.
Debt is also being used to push through the long-term strategic imperative of economic restructuring that is intended to restore lost inequalities and to impose new ones.
The announcement today has more to do with appearances than with reality. Just as we were the poster boy for economic development during the “Celtic Tiger” period, we are now being touted as the poster boy of good behaviour for accepting austerity without a whimper.
The European Union has to show to the people of Greece, Spain, Portugal and other EU member-states that if they take the austerity medicine without resistance, it works. This is nothing more than rocking the train from side to side to pretend that it is moving forward.
The system itself is in a deep and deepening structural crisis, with debt and stagnation only the latest manifestations.
The emperor has no clothes.
