Siptu: Troika ‘bagmen for EU banks’
Members of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions met representatives of the EU/IMF/ECB group in Dublin on Monday, during which the trade union delegation claimed austerity was not working and that it had led to 15% unemployment.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said at the meeting that unions had advanced a costed investment plan that could create 100,000 jobs over three years and that if the troika found fault with that, it was “incumbent on them to put alternatives on the table”.
The union delegation emerged deflated, saying no progress had been made.
It was the latest in a series of meetings Ictu, the umbrella trade union group for 600,000 workers, has held with the troika. If Mr O’Connor had his way, it would be the last, as he said the dialogue was “at best, pointless”.
“Thus far, the only result from several meetings that Ictu has participated in with the troika is the rubbishing of well-thought-out proposals that impede its agenda which can be summed up as ‘there is no alternative’,” Mr O’Connor said.
“These meetings serve no useful purpose whatsoever. Indeed, their only motivation is quite clearly to provide some veneer of consultation. The fact of the matter is that these people are simply bagmen for the big European banks who are not interested in hearing any alternatives to their wage devaluation strategy.”
He said the troika’s agenda was impoverishing working people and is being driven “with relentless ideological zeal and in total disregard for the overwhelming evidence that one-sided austerity is not working”.
Mr O’Connor said: “In this country, we have taken €25bn, the equivalent of 16% of GDP, out of the economy over the past four-and-a-half years, only to reduce the deficit by a mere €5bn while inflicting misery on tens of thousands of people in the process.
“It is one thing to hold a view, however flawed, that short-term pain might result in long-term gain, but it is quite another to insist on continuing with it when it is patently obvious that it’s not working.”
Mr O’Connor said he would be putting a motion before the executive council of Ictu today calling for an end to meetings with the troika. “It is time to abandon the failed, one-sided austerity policy and focus on a strategy to create jobs and growth,” he said.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin, the public expenditure minister, are expected to set out the troika’s assessment of the bailout programme this week.
Its main concerns are said to be the failure to hit budget targets in the health sector, the mortgage arrears crisis, and the need to complete wider banking reform.
