Bondholder bailout - We need to have proper debate

The Taoiseach has said any move by Ireland to renege on our debts would be disastrous for our recovery.

This may well be true but we need a full debate on the issue of the Irish people’s responsibility for paying €715 million to unsecured bondholders of the old Anglo Irish Bank.

Earlier this year, before the general election, Fine Gael was suggesting that this country should burn the bondholders. This caused some people to sell their bonds at what would have been a hefty discount and now those who bought those bonds are making an attractive profit. Those people gambled and won handsomely, and the Irish people have been saddled with paying them.

Of course, the argument is being made that this country had to do so because a commitment was made to repay the bondholders in full. Whether that promise should have been made ought to be examined. Questions should also be asked about the whole issue of Fine Gael’s election promise to burn the bondholders.

These are matters that need to be teased out and the Dáil is the proper place for politicians to consider them. But the Government blocked a debate on the issue yesterday. As a result Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance walked out of the Dáil in protest.

“This is an example of arrogance, of the Government just refusing to allow a proper, decent debate on this issue,” Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams declared. The behaviour of Mr Adams and his colleagues in walking out, however, was an even more breathtaking example of contemptible arrogance.

Sinn Féin refused to recognise the authority of the Dáil, or even the existence of the state, for decades. In comparative terms Mr Adams and his colleagues are hardly in the Dáil a wet week and they are behaving like spoiled children, walking off the pitch because they do not like the rules by which the game is played. Rather than engaging in contemptible histrionics, they should be working for an appropriate debate within the Dáil. In the absence of a proper explanation, it seems that the Government is really just saying, “Trust us!”. People trusted the last government and we have been landed in this financial mess.

Last week, the Government seemed to be suggesting — with the two referendums — that people should accept its conclusion that the proposed constitutional reforms were necessary. The proposal to give the Oireachtas extra powers to hold inquiries was slipped to the people without proper explanation.

The Government was asking the electorate to trust the politicians to hold proper inquiries. A majority of the electorate answered decisively that it does not have such trust in politicians. Politicians must earn this trust.

Many people do not meekly accept the suggestion that the government had no choice on the issue of repaying the bondholders. The Dáil is the place where this issue should be fully debated; otherwise it will inevitably be debated in the streets.