Sir, – Stephen Collins writes that "we were saved in our hour of need by the EU" in the bailout of 2010 ("Ireland's interests lie in strengthened EU after Brexit", Opinion & Analysis, July 6th). The outcome of the bailout, forced on the country by the ECB threatening to withdraw liquidity support from the Irish banking system, is that Ireland is now the second most indebted country in the developed world (after Japan), the banking crisis cost 10 times more per citizen in Ireland than Germany, and the taxpayer paid out €48 billion to German banks alone to repay their private speculative losses.
He also writes that “the inevitable outcome (without the bailout) would have been deep cuts in welfare payments as well as all sorts of public spending schemes”. That’s exactly what did happen; the ESRI defined all five budgets of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition as regressive and reported that the bottom 10 per cent of the population in income terms suffered disproportionate cuts.
The EU bailout was carefully crafted to keep the Irish economy afloat so that the private speculative losses of European banks and bondholders could be repaid by the Irish taxpayer; a bankrupt country would default on these payments, a route Greece is in constant danger of exploring. Similarly the EU will do just enough to keep Ireland able to continue these repayments, though probably at the cost of another round of austerity. To paraphrase Stephen Collins’s argument, we will be saved in the hour of the EU’s need. – Yours, etc,
DONAL McGRATH,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.