Ballyhea says ‘enough’ - Five years of debt protest ends

THE “Ballyhea says No to the Bondholders” campaign marched for the 262nd and last time yesterday.

The banners have been put away but the integrity of their cause, the shining honesty of their argument, remains undiminished but tragically unresolved. That will always be the case. The imposition of private losses on this country’s public purse had no, and can never have, any moral foundation.

There is no argument, other than power against powerlessness, for the imposition of losses, incurred by international investors in the formalised Ponzi scheme known as the Irish property market of a decade ago, on the public purse. Yet that is what transpired and will shape public budgets for decades to come.

It will limit our capacity to deliver the kind of services that define a civilised society. Where we should employ nurses and teachers we must pay German bankers or Dutch pension schemes to cover their bad bets. The bank bailout cost €65bn and the annual interest bill edges close to €2bn.

The Ballyhea protests highlighted the albatross-around-the-neck nature of this crushing debt and showed how a small, near-bankrupt country is powerless and cedes its sovereignty to its all-powerful paymasters. It must be a priority of the 32nd Dáil, and every subsequent Dáil, that we never find ourselves in such an unequal position again. The Ballyhea protests contributed to establishing that awareness and for that they must be congratulated and thanked.