THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 15th 2012

According to the Namawinelake blog, with the injection last week of a €1.3bn payment to Irish Life and Permanent the gross cost so far to the Irish exchequer for bailing out our banks and their bondholders is  €69.7bn, made up as follows:  

AIB/EBS:                                      €20.7bn

Bank ofIreland:                                €4.7bn

IBRC (formerly Anglo/INBS):           €34.7bn

Irish Life and Permanent:                 €4.0bn

NAMA                                            €5.6bn

(that's state aid to the banks when it acquired €74bn of loans for which it paid €32bn.)

According to Census 2011 the population of the Republic of Ireland last year was 4,581,269, which means that between them, this government and the last has agreed a debt for every single one of us of €15,214 to bail out our banks and those to whom they owed those billions. In return for this largesse on the part of our government the ECB allowed us borrow those billions from them, with interest.

With all our energy a few of us in Ballyhea and Charleville are fighting this crime. We marched again last Sunday, week 71 of our protest, we'll march again next Sunday, and the Sunday after and the Sunday after, until this wrong is righted.

Our media again last week is selling the idea that everything has been sorted, has highlighted the claims of Enda and Michael that they have secured a great deal for Ireland in Europe, just a matter of ironing out a few details. Nothing is secured, everything is still up in the air. As a people we have got to start doing things for ourselves, we've got to start making our own demands. If we don't, then how can we complain about what befalls us?

This Thursday, July 12th, we pay a sterling bond of £1.5m to some lucky punter in EBS, lucky because this an unsecured unguaranteed bond that we have no duty to pay. Relative to the other bonds we - through our banks - pay out on a regular basis it's only a baby bond; I hope it's going to someone on the other side of the border here, a happy 'Twalfth' holiday to someone in Belfast perhaps - at least the money would be staying on the island.