The Workers’ Party has said that the report of the Banking Inquiry, published today (Wednesday) is worthless because the inquiry was a toothless tiger that was meant to fail and missed the point completely.
Workers’ Party Meath East candidate Seamus McDonagh said the inquiry had been an expensive waste of money and could never have achieved a satisfactory result because of the rules and restrictions under which it was established.
Seamus McDonagh (WP)
McDonagh said that despite an incalculably expensive mistake neither the EU institutions or the governments had learned anything and there is every chance that the events of September 2008 and its aftermath could happen all over again.
He said, “the biggest failure – and it was no mistake – was the decision to save the banks instead of saving the Irish people. The idea that banks cannot be allowed to fail, still a central plank of ECB and Irish government policy, is completely unacceptable. Bad banks should not only be allowed to fail but they should never have been allowed in the first place. “
“The cost of the banking fiasco is one the Irish people will have to carry for the next two generations. Nor is it possible to separate the result of the crisis from the deep crisis in health, education and public services. Those lingering on hospital A&E trolleys or endless housing lists are there because the present government and their predecessors decided that banks were more important than human beings.” said Seamus McDonagh.
The Workers’ Party spokesman said that the mindset of those who set up Anglo Irish Bank and who engaged in reckless speculation is still the dominant economic philosophy in this country today. “It was the bankers and speculators who were the first to feel the benefits of a recovery in the economy, a recovery which has not reached the hundreds of thousands of people at the other end of the economic pyramid. There must be an alternative to the lethal boom and bust cycle of capitalism. The Workers’ Party believes that the only alternative which really cares about working class people is the socialist alternative and that is the philosophy we are putting forward in the general election”, said McDonagh.