Sunday 23 October 2011

Senator David Norris attempts to talk about the Anglo-Irish bondholders in the Seanad (Irish Senate)


In response to queries that I have received over the last few days, I am happy to provide the links below to the protocols of the Irish senate in which Senator David Norris tried desperately to name the Anglo-Irish bond holders. One has to wonder why he was the only one who attempted to do so? Why was he really silenced?


whistleblower.irl@gmail.com     




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Seanad Eireann Debate 
Vol. 205 No. 17, 

25 November 2010




































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Seanad Éireann Debate 
Vol. 206 No. 4

7 December 2010



Senator David Norris: Information on David P.B. Norris  Zoom on David P.B. Norris  With regard to the bank guarantee, I share my colleagues’ concern. I voted against the guarantee. I also asked several pertinent questions. I asked about the exact amount of the guarantee, which was some €440 billion. Then I asked the Minister and his advisers our gross national product for the previous year. They did not know and had to go out and make a telephone call. Is that not extraordinary? When they came back, it turned out that our gross national product for that year was less than half what we were to guarantee. It was quite extraordinary and one of the principal reasons I voted against it. I am concerned that, not only in this Parliament but across Europe, politicians are playing their own narrow sectional, national and partisan games. There is no doubt the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is making a mistake when she sets her face against the development of euro bonds. This is the weapon about which I was talking last week that might help to rescue the situation and she opposes it for perfectly sound national electoral reasons. If the euro is to survive, there is an inevitability that centrifugal forces will drive it towards such centralisation. If it does not, the euro will fracture.

I believe we are entitled to know various matters about the bank guarantee. Recently I tried to put some bondholders’ names on the record but the Cathaoirleach stopped me. I will now try to do so again and, subsequently, will be looking for the Cathaoirleach to explain why he stopped me. Will the Leader confirm that one of the bondholders is Goldman Sachs? This company has been described as a vampire squid on the face of the public purse and we are entitled to know if it is one of the bondholders. Money has been taken from the people referred to by Senator MacSharry who have had to switch off their electricity supply and live in squalor, fear and the cold to pay these big financial institutions which have gambled. It is wrong, unethical and unjust. We need to know to whom we are giving the money.


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Two other articles that have been hotly discussed in the last few days are:



Who bankrupted Ireland? - Golem XIV, Nov. 2010


Now across Europe the great blame game will rumble back into play.  Our banks, your banks, their banks, or is it your feckless householders or ours, certainly can’t be theirs, they’re still doing well in Germany.  Expect lots more national stereotypes to be wheeled out for ritual defamation.
So let’s ask who it was took a dump in Ireland?.....






As Honohan’s report emerges, the Dáil is gagged - Vincent Browne


Sunday Business Post, 6 June 2010


Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan’s report on the financial collapse of the banking sector was presented to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan last Monday.

Lenihan read it then, and told his cabinet colleagues about it on Tuesday. The report is to be considered this Tuesday by the cabinet - or at least by those cabinet ministers who have decided not to go off on an unearned holiday.

When the cabinet ministers who are around have decided how to ‘‘spin’’ the report, it will be published - but only then.

.......
...the forum (ie, the Dáil) which, theoretically, is expected to enforce accountability on the executive arm of government has been bullied by the executive arm of government into remaining entirely silent on one of the most pressing issues of our time, precisely when a report on the government’s culpability for the crisis comes into the public domain.

And the sovereign people are denied knowledge of the report until the government has its spin sorted out. This is called democracy, I think. 



http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/as-honohans-report-emerges-the-dail-is-gagged-49654.html