A chara,
I write to register with you, my representative, my objection to the NAMA legislation as currently drafted. I shall not vote, on any occasion in the future, for any TD or Senator who backs the NAMA legislation in the Dáil or Seanad. Furthermore, I will encourage everyone in my social, local and work circles to do the same, explaining in detail how and why you, in voting for this legislation, have aligned yourself against the interests of your constituents, your society and the Irish economy.
NAMA is the result of corruption in our political and economic systems and will result in Ireland slipping into a long and deep recession. It is ill-conceived and poorly-costed; the Department of Finance lost years ago the ability to undertake costing exercises and this was a deliberate policy on the part of Charlie McCreevy and his Progressive Democrat allies in successive Governments supported by you. This played into the hands of out-of-control bankers and the developers on whom they relied to create tens of thousands of surplus to requirement houses and commercial properties in inconvenient, impractical and unserviced areas of the country.
In formulating NAMA, the Government has not, for example, taken into account the effect of European Central Bank interest rate rises, projected to begin next year, on the cost to the taxpayer of the Bonds to be issued to the banks. Servicing those Bonds will in the medium to long term be far more expensive than the Cabinet is telling the Irish people and the Dáil. In a stagnating economy with rising unemployment, there will be little money for anything else.
This poorly-researched plan appears to have as its sole aim the bailing out of a tiny class of wealthy, incompetent bankers who have brought the economy to its knees. They are to keep their positions and grossly inflated salaries, pensions, director’s fees and bonuses at the expense of public services for citizens; desperately needed public services which in many cases neither they nor the politicians who are helping them to destroy this country have used or will ever have to use. The Government repeats the fiction daily that Lehman Brothers not Irish bankers are responsible for the destruction of their banks. These bankers continue to think of themselves as heroes as their share prices rise on foot of a public bail-out and will no doubt reward themselves handsomely for achieving the kind of massive State subsidy that would be deemed immoral were even a fraction of it directed towards the poor, the sick and the struggling families of PAYE workers.
It is a general consensus outside the banks and the Government that NAMA will not result in the freeing up of credit for Irish businesses. The banks will sit on their bonds and ill-gotten gains as the economy slips deeper into recession, the tax take continues to fall and the dole queues continue to lengthen. They will probably have no other choice. The Government is allowing the banks to disguise the real level of toxic debt on their books. Developer loans are the tip of the iceberg. In an unregulated environment, cheered on by Fianna Fáil and PD Ministers and their fellow travellers in the media, the Irish people have been conned and cajoled by their banks into huge mortgages and consumer, car-loan, overdraft and credit card debt. Once the NAMA bailout is secured, and in an environment of still rising unemployment and property price falls, the banks will begin to foreclose on this debt among your constituents. These people will never recover. And they will never again be foolish or stupid enough to vote for Fianna Fáil or for you.
NAMA dooms Ireland to revert to the sad economic conditions of the 1980s where a handful of wealthy people will continue to enjoy business as usual and avoid contributing their fair share to the country. The middle-classes and what public sector workers are left will be forced to batten down the hatches as they take on increasing burdens on smaller incomes, with few resources left for the kind of discretionary expenditure that is the lifeblood of jobs and economic activity in the towns and villages of this country. Where will that leave the marginal, the elderly, the sick? Think of an ECB interest rate rise to even 5%, to 8%. What do you think this will mean for taxation and paying for the bankers’ bailout? Your constituents will have no come back against the boards of the AIB and Bank of Ireland. You and your party, however, are a different story.
This crisis came about as a result of the greed and stupidity of the very people who are refusing to take any responsibility for it. Irish banks pushed cheap money that flowed from the European Central Bank onto developers to fuel a building boom that spiralled out of control in the absence of any planning or fiscal regulation on the part of the Ministers who are now moving to protect those self-same bankers. In an atmosphere of hysteria about rising house prices and in the Government-mandated absence of any real and substantial controls on retail mortgages, planning or land prices, the banks sold cheap mortgages to ordinary working people at ruinous multiples of the average industrial wage. This was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme and a con on desperate working people with growing families, people who relied on you and your colleagues in the Dáil to properly govern the country. The Ponzi scheme has now collapsed but instead of punishing the people at the top, your party is moving to bail them out with what is left of the People’s money.
I will watch your vote on this plan with interest. I assure you that should you support the enactment of this legislation, you, your party and any spin-off party that results will never in my lifetime receive a vote at the ballot paper. Nor will you receive the votes of my family, friends or work colleagues.
During the First World War, the Irish Parliamentary Party, by far the most significant electoral force in Irish politics at that time, decided to align itself with an interest, Jingoistic Imperialism, which was at odds with the interests of ordinary Irish people. In doing so, the party was revealed as little more than a machine for securing sinecures and jobs for the boys. In the 1918 General Election, the party which had held at its height more than 80 of the 103 Irish seats at Westminster ceased to exist.
The current economic crisis is a watershed moment in Irish political history. If NAMA is passed, the consequences for Irish citizens are dire. In supporting the bankers against the interests of the Irish People, Fianna Fáil is, like the Irish Parliamentary Party before it, signing its own death warrant.
You and your colleagues in Fianna Fáil are in the unique position of being able to stop the leaders of your party from destroying the country for the sake of a small coterie of bankers with whom the leaders of your party are too closely related because of where they went to school, because of where they live, because of a golden circle of sinecures, directorships and election funding and because of the failed and vicious ideology of Charlie McCreevy and the Progressive Democrats.
If you fail to take the opportunity that has been presented to you, it is you will suffer the consequences at the ballot box. You and your former party colleagues will have pariah status in this country for the rest of your lives. The people of this country face a decade and more of penury, joblessness and decimated public services for which they cannot but hold you and your colleagues responsible.
I urge you to think very carefully about the consequences of aligning yourself against the interests of the people who, if NAMA goes ahead, you will have left with nothing to lose.
Yours sincerely,
No To NAMA Protest Letter 