Austerity Treaty is a Bondholders Charter – Life before Debt – no payment to bondholders while our people go hungry

Campaign Against the Austerity Treaty.

 

Press statement – 28-5-2012 – immediate release.

 

Austerity Treaty is a Bondholders Charter

 

Life before Debt – no payment to bondholders while our people go hungry.

 

Vote No to the bankers treaty.

 

Campaigners for a No vote today protested against the payment of €2.25 in bonds by state-owned AIB, saying the Treaty would institutionalise this anti-social policy.

Brendan Young said:

“AIB has had a €20 billion bailout from the Irish state and is effectively 98% state owned. AIB will today pay out €2.25 billion in a bond payment. Speculators were buying AIB bonds for 52 cents last November – so these anonymous bondholders will make a huge profit when they’re paid in full today.

 

Meanwhile, St. Vincent de Paul report that 20,000 people called them for help getting food last year. Why is this government letting bondholders be paid by a bank that it owns, while our people go hungry, lie waiting on hospital trolleys and languish on the dole?

This anti-social policy would be set in stone by the Austerity Treaty. Article 4 of the Treaty makes it a Bondholders Charter. The requirement to reduce our debt to 60% of GDP means billions will be paid to banks and their bondholders from 2018 – when Ireland’s debt will be close to 120% of GDP.”

Andy Storey said:

“This Treaty would effectively rule out the state investment needed to get people back to work – the only means to reduce deficits and debts. Growth in the meantime will be ruled out by the deficit reduction targets of Article 3. Long-term spending cuts and impoverishment will result.

 

This Treaty would fatally undermine public services and let the banks and finance houses who caused this crisis off the hook. 

If the treaty is passed the government will introduce legislation concerning the structural deficit and other matters. What happens if a future government decides to repeal this legislation? Such a government would be in breach of the treaty and open to action against it in the European Court of Justice.  So we could be taken to court for seeking to alter economic policy.  A catastrophic austerity strategy would thus become more tightly locked in place.

We call on people to come out and vote No to this anti-democratic and anti-social Treaty. “