Socialist Party MEP, Joe Higgins, refused to participate in a meeting between Irish MEPs and the Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn. MEP Higgins left the meeting after Mr Rehn stated he would only share essential information if all the MEPs agreed not to disclose the contents.
Joe Higgins said after leaving the meeting
“After a week in which the Irish people were persistently misled and lied to it was outrageous to suggest that elected representatives could not share with those who elected them what Commissioner Rehn had to say
“As far as I am concerned commissioner Rehn and the IMF are acting as agents for the predatory international banks and the speculators who gambled billions in private deals with property developers and bankers in Ireland and now want the Irish working class to pay for these gambles which went wrong.
“I was therefore not going to participate in any secret discussion behind the backs of working people and the unemployed.
“It is essential that there is a major mobilisation of people power and worker power to stop the disastrous austerity programme beginning next Saturday at the National Protest organised by ICTU.”
