Healy – Taoiseach Made Wrong And Misleading Statement To Dail yesterday on BOI to cover up “Rip off”Share Sale
Statement by Seamus Healy TD
In the course of his speech on the Governments Economic Plan , Seamus Healy TD called on the Taoiseach to Correct the Dail Record on the disastrous sale of shares in BoI which he totally misrepresented to the Dail yesterday.
He said:
In July 2011, that financial wizard Michael Noonan sold 1.123 Billion of government shares in Bank of Ireland to Wilbur Ross and a North American Consortium. Now the shares are worth 3.8 billion. Wilbur thinks Michel Noonan and Richie Boucher are marvellous!! The reason the shares rose is that investors have been assured by Michael that BoI is a pillar bank. Recently Michael saved Wilbur and the mainly private owners of BoI a further 325m at the expense of the state when he voluntarily sold 1.3 billion in preference shares which the bank couldn’t redeem to a third party.
Yesterday the Taoiseach said in answer to me at Leaders Questions “Mr Ross’ investment in Bank of Ireland meant there was less of a capitalisation requirement for the taxpayer.” This is totally untrue. The sale of 1.123 billion in state shares had no effect on capitalisation. It merely meant that 1.123 billion of state shares was replaced by 1.123 billion of shares held by the north American consortium of vulture capitalists. I call on the Taoiseach to correct the record of the house. It is a disservice to democracy if a Taoiseach can tell a blatant untruth to the house to cover up the fact that Wilbur Ross and associates walked away with 2.7 billion euro in Irish Peoples money because of the ideological position of the government.
Economic Treason Continues as Labour/Fine Gael Sells Off the Country to Foreign Financial Vultures
Mortgages on Homes, Shopping centres, Business Premises, Indebted farms being Flogged off at a Discount by Government!
The Policies of Davitt and Connolly must be revisited!
When the crash came and the banks failed Fianna Fail and the Greens borrowed many billions and paid off in full the big international gamblers who had lent to the Banks. The Irish people were burdened with huge debt repayments for generations. Eamonn Gilmore called it economic treason. In addition, when the neo-liberal or extreme capitalist tax base they had put in place collapsed, they borrowed more money abroad instead of increasing income tax and imposing wealth tax on the super-rich, most of whom made a fortune out of the boom. For every developer who lost a million another wealthy person has a million in cash. Savage cuts and austerity was put in place
The new government was going to do the “Divil and All” including burning bond holders. It would be Labour’s Way not Frankfurt’s WAY.
But what happened. There were no significant tax impositions on the rich as borrowing for day to day services continued. Instead regressive home tax was imposed and water taxes planned on all householders. Burning of Bondholders was out. Savage cuts were continued in human services, the welfare system, pay and pensions to service the increased foreign debt. More Money borrowed abroad was put into banks. National debt rose to 120% of all national production, the highest in the developed world
Now 9 billion a year or 750m a month is being paid out by the exchequer to service the national debt! Frankfurts way has prevailed!
Frankfort then decided that not only would the national debt have to be serviced, it would have to be paid back. Reducing the budgetary deficit to 3% of GDP would not be enough. The “Structural deficit” must be eliminated. Lab/FG capitulated to the Fiscal Treaty though it is grossly unfair to Ireland.
At current meagre Growth rates over 4 billion a year will have to be paid back, mainly, to foreign investors every year for twenty years in addition to the 9 billion debt servicing mentioned earlier. Now the EU Report on Ireland ,published yesterday,says that to eliminate the “structural deficit” by 2018 as required by the treaty the budgetary deficit must be changed from -4.8% of GDP this year to a surplus of 4.9% in 2018 involving the extraction of a further 14.5 billion out of the economy.
Because of government capitulation to the Fiscal Treaty there will be another 4 years of particularly savage austerity and the continuation of misery, austerity budgets, low growth and emigration into the indefinite future.
NEW TREACHERY BEGUN
In July 2011, that financial wizard Michael Noonan sold 1.123 Billion of government shares in Bank of Ireland to Wilbur Ross and a North American Consortium. Now the shares are worth 3.8 billion. Wilbur thinks Michel Noonan and Richie Boucher are marvellous!! The reason the shares rose is that investors have been assured by Michael that BoI is a pillar bank. Recently Michael saved Wilbur and the mainly private owners of BoI a further 325m at the expense of the state when he voluntarily sold 1.3 billion in preference shares which the bank couldn’t redeem to a third party.
Yesterday the Taoiseach said in answer to me at Leaders Questions “Mr Ross’ investment in Bank of Ireland meant there was less of a capitalisation requirement for the taxpayer.” This is totally untrue. The sale of 1.123 billion in state shares had no effect on capitalisation. It merely meant that 1.123 billion of state shares was replaced by 1.123 billion of shares held by the north American consortium of vulture capitalists. I call on the Taoiseach to correct the record of the house. It is a disservice to democracy if a Taoiseach can tell a blatant untruth to the house to cover up the fact that Wilbur Ross and associates walked away with 2.7 billion euro in Irish Peoples money because of the ideological position of the government.
But this was only the beginning! Next week, the liquidators of IBRC are to sell off the roofs over the heads of 13,500 Irish People to foreign vulture capitalists at a discount. The government has refused to give the home owners the protections available to customers of the Irish banks. Smart Michael, who met the Lone Star Cowboys in a pub over in Davos, thinks it might reduce the selling price! Labour Deputy leader Joan Burton told me at leaders questions that because the vultures were getting a discount they could be expected to go easier on distressed mortgage holders! Does she think we are complete fools?
But that is only the tipp of the ice-berg. The state owns over 90% of AIP and Permanent TSB. As Labour and Fine Gael are ideologically committed to privatising banks, Smart Michael says they will be sold off before the next election! Given the government approach, all those holding mortgages with these state banks are in danger of being sold off as part of the privatisation.
The vultures are already circling— Lone Star Funds of Texas, Carval Investors of America, Apple Global Management of New York and Oak Tree Capital of California, to mention but a few. Nama has already sold the Navan Shopping Center and the Fairgreen shopping centre in Mullingar to Carval. The IBRC liquidator has sold Arnotts’ loans to Apollo. Oaktree is already involved with Nama in a Dublin Dockland Project . These are but examples.
The recently screened documentary “Who is Buying Ireland” featured another 5 vulture funds which are buying up assets all over Ireland
NAMA
NAMSA has acquired 74 Billion of bank Loans. NAMA’s CEO has said, the Agency is now moving into a new phase of managed disposals of property and loan assets. Its strategy is to attract foreign capital. Nama currently has 1000 Irish properties for sale.
In short, Mortgages on Homes, Shopping centres, Business Premises, Indebted farms are being Flogged off at a Discount by this Government Agency!
But That is not All
The neo-Liberal or extreme pro-capitalist Labour Party, through its Minister Pat Rabitte, has sold off Bord Gais to foreign capital and is committed to further sales!
As Paul Sweeny, Chief Economic Advisor to ICTU said in a recent opinion piece in the Irish Times: “Does it make sense to sell one of Ireland’s largest indigenous companies, Bord Gáis Energy (BGE), to a foreign multinational to repay a fraction of the debts of the collapsed private Irish banks.”
As a result of this continuation of Economic Treason, the amount of money generated by the work of the Irish people going abroad now and in future years will become catastrophic. This includes mortgage and loan repayments by Irish residents, and an increase from 9 billionto 13 billion in government debt servicing costs as soon as the Fiscal Treaty kicks in next year.
This huge amount of money will not be circulating in Ireland and generating jobs and sales here. It will be doing so in other parts of the world or sitting in the bulging bank accounts of vulture capitalists.
Worse still these vultures will be able to increase repayments on these loans in order to suck more blood out of the Irish People. They will e able to impose increased mortgage repayments and upward only rent reviews .They will be able to repossess Irish homes and business premises. The modern equivalent of the old rack renting landlord will be able to deploy the modern equivalent of the battering ram.
This is indeed further economic treason.
In the 1800s Irish people were paying tenant rents and ground rents to foreign capitalists and landlords. The money needed to develop the country was going abroad
Michael Davitt and James Connolly among others set out to change this.
Connolly wrote of the Need for the Reconquest of Ireland by the Irish People
The government is now rolling back any progress made in this regard by the Irish People over the last 150 years and re-impoverishing the Irish people.
This national treachery must end
There must be a return to Connollys social and economic policies.
We need a new Reconquest of Ireland by its people and a new leadership of the Labour Movement and of the irish People to achieve it