HE has badgered this Government (and the last one) over handing over billions of euro in taxes to greedy bondholders.
Now Donegal deputy Pearse Doherty thinks he may actually be getting somewhere!
Speaking in response to reports that Minister for Finance Michael Noonan will seek support from the EU and ECB to impose losses on senior un-guaranteed and unsecured bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, the Sinn Fein Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty welcomed the move as a ‘first step’.
“Only last week in the Dail I called on the Minister to take this course of action as a first step in addressing the scale of the debt burden bearing down on the Irish people.
“However, it is not enough for Minister Noonan to seek permission from the EU and ECB to take this course of action. He should make it clear that while he would prefer their support, his intention is to impose losses on these un-guaranteed and unsecured bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide.
“The next step that Minister Noonan must take is to impose losses on the remaining €13 billion of un-guaranteed unsecured senior bonds held by Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, EBS and Irish Life and Permanent.
“These senior bonds were never guaranteed by the Irish state. There is simply no justification for taxpayers’ money being used to pay these toxic debts. The state has already committed €70 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail out the banks.”
The Donegal man added: “At a time when ordinary people are being forced to shoulder the burden of decisions taken by reckless politicians and bankers, there is neither an economic nor an ethical reason why Irish taxpayers’ money should be used to pay these bondholders.”
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