Over 23 organisations from around the country have come together as part of a campaign to demand that payments to Anglo bondholders are halted immediately.
The group of organisations, which include members of universities UCD and Maynooth as well as the Unite Trade Union, have set up a website – www.notourdebt.ie - to encourage members of the public to joint them in lobbying TDs and ministers on the matter.
The groups involved in the campaign include: Action From Ireland (Afri), Africa Centre, Africa-Europe Faith and Justice Network, Ballyhea Says No To Bondholder Bailout, Canal Communities Campaign for Equality and Fairness, Centre for Global Education, Clondalkin Travellers’ Development Group, Comhlámh, Debt and Development Coalition Ireland, Fermoy Says No To Bondholder Bailouts, Galway One World Centre, Irish Missionary Union – Justice, Just Forests, Kilbarack Community Development Project, Latin America Solidarity Centre, Little Sisters of the Assumption, NUI Maynooth Community Education, Equality and Social Activism, UCD School of Social Justice, Unite Trade Union, Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles, Spectacle of Defiance and Hope and individual Community workers and campaigners.
Independent think-tank TASC is also providing technical advice.
In a statement on their site, the group said: “People in Ireland have joined millions of people worldwide repaying unjust and illegitimate ‘debts’.
“Ireland’s repayments of the now dead Anglo-Irish Bank’s debts could reach over €47 billion by 2031 if the repayments are not suspended! That’s over €26,000 per working person.
“The debts run up by the former Anglo-Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society (which we are simply calling ‘Anglo’) are not the responsibility of living in Ireland – they are the responsibility of those who lent recklessly to Anglo.
“Yet we have been saddled with repaying the debts through so-called ‘promissory notes’, of which the next, amounting to €3.1 billion, falls due on 31st March. Such payments are to continue for years to come – until the 2030s!
“This money could and should be used to maintain and expand public services and provide a desperately needed stimulus to the depressed economy.
“We call on the government to immediately stop these repayments and to enter into negotiations with the relevant parties (including the European Central Bank) – to ensure that this unjust debt is written down. Please write to your local TDs requesting that they take urgent action on this issue. Visit your TD constituency office and clinics during their opening hours and tell your TDs how these repayments affect your life and your community and that you do not consent to them!
“Please write also to the Minister for Finance – he is the man signing the cheques that are mortgaging all our futures.”
