State assets belong to the people

IN a recent report in your newspaper (Oct 1), Ann Cahill revealed that the EU /ECB /IMF troika had asked the Government to raise substantially more than €2 billion through the sale of state assets, even though this had been agreed in the Programme for Government.

How dare these ideology-driven bureaucrats put such arrogant demands on a sovereign, democratic state?

What makes these demands worse is that in addition to other drivers, they are driven by an ideology; fundamentalist free-market capitalism of the neo-liberal kind. This is the case with the IMF which became a neo-liberal entity in the early 1980s when the organisation was cleansed of all Keynesian influences and repopulated with neo-liberals from Wall Street.

Ever since the IMF have been using the economic difficulties of various countries as a lever to force those countries to privatise state assets. This satisfies neo-liberal ideology, and it acts to shift wealth from ordinary people to wealthy elites, which is one of the main objectives of the neo-liberal project. In fact, privatisation is a key part of neo-liberal ideology, as is de-regulation. Neo-liberalism and those who support this ideology have destroyed the world economy. Isn’t it time to get this destructive ideology off the peoples’ backs? I can understand that the Government did not want this, but was forced to make cuts in public spending that affected some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

I could also understand how the Government was forced to make the Irish people make up for the gambling losses of foreign banks. But surely there comes a time when the people, through their government, must say no to the demands of the troika.

State assets belong to the people of Ireland. How did the Government ever get the right to sell off these assets without the peoples’ approval, especially when this sell-off is being forced upon the people and its government? To cave into these demands turns the Irish people into servants of global finance and a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in the IMF and the EU. Surely an Irish Government must either put up a fight on this matter, or announce publicly that Ireland is no longer a free and independent state, but just a vassal of foreign states and foreign organisations.

Brian Abbott

Glencairn

Bishopstown Road

Cork