“Try again. Fail again. Fail better” writes Samuel Beckett in his 1983 story “Worstward Ho.”
Micheál Martin obviously took this quip to heart when he went to Brussels and opened the veins of the Irish taxpayer so he could get a pat on the head from his EU masters.
The last time Micheál was in cabinet, his government, with a gun to the head from the Troika, put the Irish state on the hook for a sizzling €64 billion in Franco-German bank debt. Our grandchildren will be paying it off, and we can now see why his party should be called not Fianna Fáil but Fianna Failure.
In Brussels last week, he failed bigger and better than anybody could have thought. He is in the big seat for 3 weeks and he’s sold us out again this time to the tune of €15.7 billion.
This is the debt liability placed on Irish taxpayers shoulders because of his approval of the EU’s Covid Recovery Fund.
Every man, woman and child in Ireland will be ultimately liable for €3,201 debt from 2028 onwards to fund the EU because Micheál Martin approved this EU Fund.
Ireland, with less than 1% of the EU’s population, is going to be the fifth biggest contributor to the EU bailout. We will be liable for the biggest debt per head of population of any state in Europe bar wealthy Luxembourg. And it’s not as if we can afford it.
€15.7 billion is a lot of money for a country with a current public debt of 228 billion euro and 25% of its people unemployed.
As it stands, €44,365 is already owed in public debt by every man, woman and child in the State. We are the 3rd most publicly indebted country in the world.
That €15.7 billion he vouched to Brussels would have been better invested in Irish schools, hospitals, helping the unemployed back to work, and digging small businesses out of bankruptcy caused by the Covid lockdown.
Micheál Martin’s priority must always be the people of Ireland. Yet he worked for anything but the national interest.
As a state, we are heavily indebted already without being drawn deeper into the quagmire of the EU’s growing debtor Union.
Yet the raging Europhile political class are protected by the obscurantism and spin of the Irish media, who largely tried to keep Micheál’s financial capitulation to Brussels quiet. This has generally been the case for our decades of EU membership.
Irish Times Brussels correspondent Naomi O’Leary informs us of the €750 billion EU Recovery Fund and that money would be borrowed on financial markets by the European Commission, some of it paid off by new taxes (digital and plastic etc) or custom levies which have not yet been agreed. But eventually even she gives the game away with her sentence:
“Member states are the ultimate guarantors of the loans, and so would ultimately be on the hook for repayments if all else fails.” Mmm nice. Thanks Micheál!
We were told by our political leaders on joining the EU (then Common Market) in 1973 that we would sign up and get lots of dough. But it never worked out that way because Ireland has been a huge net contributor to the EU since we joined.
Yes, we received net €44 billion cash since we joined according to Government figures, but the EU/ECB/IMF Troika unjustly imposed €64 bn private bank debt on our backs. Our taxpayers ended up bailing out private Franco-German banks. They also progged €18 billion from our national pension fund. In addition, EU boats have stripped €215 billion worth of fish out of our territorial waters since 1975 according to research by DCU’s Dr Karen Devine using Eurostat figures.
And has it been worth it? Has the white anting of Irish national democracy – whereby the visible institutions of Dáil and Irish Supreme Court etc remain but denuded of their full power to act for the good of the Irish people and respond to their wishes?
As it stands, in matters of EU competence, EU law is superior to Irish law, the Irish Constitution and our Supreme Court.
And in the drive for “ever closer union”, the EU wants power to raise financial and digital market taxes as it seeks to hunt down and destroy Ireland’s corporate tax regime.
We are politically and as we can see here financially, not an independent sovereign state but a subservient province of the European Union whose capital is Brussels. Sovereignty and self-determination has gone, only a facade of national democracy remains while we are EU members.
A plausible financial case for joining the Common Market could be made in 1973, but those days and arguments are finished, obsolete.
Ireland has been a net contributor in cash terms, to the EU budget since 2013, and in 2018 our net contribution was €720 million. The amount of taxpayer cash we shovel to Brussels each year is also set to increase sharply. We at the Irish Freedom Party say it’s not worth it anymore. That Ireland should become a sovereign independent state, free of Brussels control, and free to work in the best interests of its people. Demographically and democratically, the EU is a dead duck. It was only ever a 1970s solution to a 1950s problem. But times have changed; soon the EU will have only 15% of the world’s GDP, halving since the 1970s.
And for Ireland outside the EU, we can take back control of our democracy and destiny as a people, trading globally as an export of goods nation, rather than exporting our taxes to Brussels where we have currently outsourced huge chunks of legislative power.
A nation once again, not an EU province, is what Ireland needs to be.
Good article, but Ireland has not been “a net contributor” since it joined the EU. The article itself states that Ireland has received a net €44bn since joining. It only became a net contributor following the expansion of the EU to the east, and has been overall a big drain on EU coffers. This is ultimately British money. Britain was a net contributor throughout, and the EU was a mechanism for handing that money to Ireland. And the Irish have never been known to refuse a handout.
I fear the only way that Ireland can escape now would be to temporarily reunite with the rest of the UK, subject to binding agreement to be a completely devolved nation within the UK before and after the UK’s final leaving on 1/1/21.
Otherwise, once the UK leaves, Ireland would be at the mercy of all the EU’s unification agendas – not only Tax Harmonisation that would remove any fiscal benefit of foreign corporations to be there, but also unmentioned issues such as Ireland and Malta being the only remaining Right-Hand-Drive countries. You can be sure that all Ireland’s road network fittings and vehicles being rendered worthless will not stop Merkel saving her auto industries by forcing Ireland and Malta to change to Left-Hand-Drive.
However, it might be a good idea to retain a few very precisely legally-limited common agencies such as Aviation, Coastguard, maybe also Police and Security arrangements such as the “Five-Eyes”.
Ireland is not part of Five Eyes, which is restricted to the UK USA Canada Australia and New Zealand. They may receive information that has been ‘sanitised’ beforehand.
You may have to ask the French or Germans to provide your air defence in place of the RAF.
We already subsidise the Scots , so why would the UK want to subsidise the Irish?
Well, what did you expect? Ireland would be well respected if she rejoined the UK, and we would share the road back to prosperity.
The key issue is the march towards an EU Federal Super State. Even Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament, is on record as being against this in spite of his support for integrating the Eastern Bloc after the fall of the Soviet Union. True to his political nous, Cox doesn’t shout this from the rooftops and you won’t see RTE or the Irish Times turning it into headline news. The Euro was the price the French extracted for German Unification and, in spite of its superficial advantages, it remains the EU’s Achilles heel. We wouldn’t have had Brexit if the EU had remained true to its original aims; Greece , Spain, Portugal and Italy would have devalued themselves out of the 2008 Financial Crisis; and Ireland wouldn’t have been sucker-punched into permanent bankruptcy which has turned us into a puppet state. In any case, the recent recovery deal is moot because we have finally entered the era of Funny Money. Economic collapse will happen long before these new debts come due in 2028 . And that won’t be funny at all.
Excellent article. No surprise that the current administration continues the servile lap dog policy towards the EU.
In addition, EU boats have stripped €215 billion worth of fish out of our territorial waters since 1975………….’kinelll did Farage write that sentence for you?
Are you saying the EU have put fish back?
I agree we need to leave the EU, however I think we will remainas so many citizens areunable to see what is happening and accept the status quo.
“The EU is a dead duck”…….that sentence has become somewhat boring.
The biggest success of Brexit has been to underline just how powerful the EU is – and to line the pockets of the extremely wealthy British institutions and individuals who were determined to avoid EU legislation – at the expense of the British state and citizens.
Rubbish. Our trade with EU has already returned to 2020 levels even as we make free trade deals with the rest of the world. Exports to R o W aleady higher than imports. GDP forcaste to grow by 7% this year ref BOE £ 1.41 and manufacturing up by 7 .5% in 4 months during a pandemic with plenty of vaccines for all. Old EU saying Neved let a crisis go to waste. They wont this recovery fund is for 2 reasons only to take control of taxation and borrow on the open markets. It will be permanent and member states will have no say in how much is borrowed although the actual debt will lie squarely on their shoulders. A sort of unlimited EU borrowing member states pay back later.
The eu used your leo V to hold the uk to ransom to the detriment of Ireland and the UK. Why? He liked feeling important. Now a nonentity again. He made your bed now Ireland must lie in it. Ireland,s support would have had advantages for both uk and Ireland but Leo would not have got a pat on the head
How stupid are the Irish, are? Always following those that mean to harm them. From viking invaders to British domination to American influences. When will they ever have enough gumption to stand up on their own, its about time they truly show their colors by doing so. Always following like sheep with any shepherd that they see enticing them. I am jumping off a cliff tomorrow you had better come with me
Now that the UK are leaving the E.U I suppose those of Ireland are in a confused state, and I suppose now they are saying to themselves maybe we voted the wrong way. You make your bed , you lay in it. Why, in my opinion do they always go against their own beliefs and traditions of being one nation under God alone?
Ireland led astray again by deception.
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