People Before Profit has claimed that a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum on the fiscal treaty will result in billons of euro of further cuts after Ireland exits its current bailout programme.
The left-wing political grouping launched its campaign calling for a No vote this morning in Dublin.
The Dún Laoghaire TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the Government was trying to bully and intimidate people into a Yes vote in he described as an “austerity treaty”.
He and his colleagues referred several times to comments by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan yesterday in which he said that he would frame a more severe budget this year should the treaty be rejected.
Mr Boyd-Barrett said he wanted to refute the notion that the new emergency bailout facility, the European Stability Mechanism, was some form of insurance fund which Ireland could tap. He said that irrespective of the vote, the EU would come to Ireland’s rescue in the event of a second bailout because its true motivation was to protect European banks and the European financial system and not the Irish people.
Mr Boyd-Barrett and the Dublin South Central TD Joan Collins said that austerity had not worked and the focus should be on stimulus. They said that taxpayers would be forced to pay an additional €5.7 billion in cuts and taxes from 2015 onwards.
Cllr Melisa Halpin said that what was needed was an alternative policy of investment in public works programmes to stimulate the economy.
Asked about how PBP would source external funding in the event of a No vote, Mr Boyd-Barrett argued that there was no way that the EU would cut off funding and that funding would be maintained, as had happened in Greece.
He contended that 40 per cent of Ireland's debt was bank debt and ordinary people should not be asked to pay “the gambling debts" of private financial institutions.
“We want to disentangle that,” he said.
But when pressed on where the PBP would find the funding to close the gap between spending and income in public expenditure, he said it would introduce a higher tax rate for those earning over €100,000 as well as a wealth tax on assets of the very rich, a measure he said would bring in €10 billion.
When said that some very wealthy people, include Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary, said they would leave the country if the tax bill became too onerous, he replied: “That is more of the bullying and the blackmail. How long are we going to submit to the bullying and the blackmail of the superwealthy who are refusing to pay their fair share."
When it was suggested that people like Mr O’Leary pay their taxes here in Ireland rather than abroad, Mr Boyd Barrett replied: “The effective tax rate for wealthiest 20 to 30 per cent is in the region of 29 per cent when you take in the tax loopholes.
“The accumulation of wealth in that section of society has to be dealt with.”
Party chair Ailbhe Smith referred to the latest published rich list which suggested, she said, that the very wealthiest in Irish society were getting richer and the income gap between them and the rest of society was growing.
Cllr Pat Dunne said the “threat” made by Mr Noonan over a harsher Budget was comparable to his much-criticised handling of the case of the late Hepatitis C victim Brigid McCole, when he was Minister for Health in the 1990s. Mr Dunne stood over the remark when asked was it an appropriate comparison to make.
