Special Needs Protest Time to say Enough!

dublin | anti-capitalism | event notice Tuesday July 12, 2011 13:02 by Dorothy Gale

EU/IMF are in town

Wednesday 13th July
Special Needs Protest
6pm Dáil, Kildare St.

Time to say Enough!

THE IMF AND IRELAND
The IMF have teamed up with the EU Commission and the European Central Bank to impose similar policies on Ireland.
They were terrified by the collapse of the Irish bans and were worried that that this would have a knock on effect on other banks in Europe.

Originally, the European Central Bank (ECB) started pouring in money to shore up the system. They knew that Irish banks had borrowed €224 billion from British banks and €204 billion from German banks and were terrified that a default would cause their collapse.

Eventually the ECB had to acknowledge that a staggering one fifth of its total funding to European banks had gone into dodgy Irish banks and that the prospect of getting their money back relied on mortgage repayments on vastly over-valued property.
To save their own skins, they insisted that Ireland take out another €85 billion loan package from the IMF/EU to help Irish banks pay back money to the ECB and to protect the international bondholders.
In March 2011 stress tests on the banks the revealed that the losses in Irish banks were even greater than anticipated and a further €24 billion will be required. This takes the total cost of bailing out Ireland’s toxic banking system to a staggering €70 billion.

The interest rates on these loans are expected to top €9 billion per year by 2013. The overall result is that every worker in Ireland now carries a debt burden of 120,000 euro to shore up the European Banking system.

WHAT DOES IRELAND’S EU-IMF LOAN AGREEMENT INVOLVE?

In December last year the government along with the IMF/EU published a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ outlining the conditions for the €85 billion loan package.

The loan agreement locks Ireland into a very specific neo-liberal economic model dominated by policies that will impose immense pain on working people, communities and the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society by focusing on expenditure cuts, rather than on job creation or economic stimulus.

It gives huge powers to these unelected and unaccountable lenders in terms of economic decision making and commits the government to a total of €15 billion in cuts by 2013. The agreement also emphasises the need for a “business friendly environment”, “vigorous action to remove remaining restrictions on trade and competition” and a strong emphasis on private sector involvement in for example the electricity and gas sectors. Here are some of the key points:

· Draft budgets for 2012 and 2013 are indicated and include further cuts and tax increases of up to €3.6 billion for Budget 2012 and €3.1 billion for Budget 2013.
· The agreement calls for the introduction of a property tax by 2012.
· The government must provide weekly, monthly and quarterly updates to the ECB, EU and IMF.
· The IMF/EU must be consulted on any new policies introduced that are not consistent with the agreement.
· Water charges will be introduced in 2012 or 2013, by which time metering is to have been installed across the State.
· The agreement also advocates the privatisation of water by demanding that responsibility for water will be transferred from local authorities to a new water utility.
· The memorandum says the Government will adopt measures in Budget 2012 to generate “welfare and public service pension from 2025 onwards.”