Just as many predicted last November the European debt crisis has claimed another victim in Ireland. The Greens as they promised they would have quit the governing coalition with Fianna Fail and the governing party government has fallen apart.
New elections are to be held in late February which will surely result in a new and different co-alition coming to power from Labour and Fine Gael who perhaps during the campaign will be persuaded by the appeal of some of the other opposition politicians to renegotiate some of the more onerous terms of the austerity imposed on Ireland in return for help dealing with their financial crisis. The crisis was brought on by the government's comittment to bail out the banks after the crash and the refusal of the European union to develop a Euro bond to help out their more vulnerable members in raising funds. Austerity is no solution and will bring great deprivation to the Irish economy and its people.
Jonathon Swift, onetime Dean of St. Patrick's cathedral in Dublin would surely not have approved of punishing the poor for the sins of the wealthy. Hopefully , the new Irish government will agree.
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