The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

“Ireland entered the euro in 1999 and lost control of the two vital monetary instruments: setting interest rates and setting currency exchange rates. Had Ireland remained outside the euro, its bankers would not have gained access to the euro zone’s vast and low interest borrowing opportunities. Without the outlandish credit [...]

“The member states whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.”
- Amendment to Article 136 of [...]

“By the end of the summer Angela Merkel and I will be making joint proposals on economic government in the eurozone. We will give a clearer vision of the way we see the Eurozone evolving. Our ambition is to seize the Greek crisis to make a quantum leap in Eurozone government…The very words were once [...]

From the Sunday Independent - Interview of Pat Cox was ‘one-sided’ and ‘unfair’:
An interview conducted by the RTE broadcaster, Marian Finucane, with the aspirant Fine Gael presidential candidate Pat Cox, during which he gave a “partisan and patronising lecture to the nation”, has been found to be unfair, partial and lacking in [...]

Future historians will surely see Ireland’s joining the Eurozone in 1999 and abolishing its national currency to adopt the euro as the worst policy mistake ever made by the Irish State. It was an act of gross irresponsibility on the part of a political class that had come to see themselves as “good Europeans” first [...]

JOIN THE DEMONSTRATION  AGAINST THE  “EU RE-DEDICATION RITES” OUTSIDE THE DÁIL,  MONDAY  9 MAY, FROM 12.30 TO 2:00PM
Ireland’s Euro-fanatics and ultra-Europhiles are getting panicky.
As the European Central Bank turns us all into indentured debt peons for a generation and France and Germany plan assaults on our 12.5% company tax rate, they fear that Ireland’s long [...]

Statement from the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, March 2011
1. FIANNA FÁIL DOWN, FINE GAEL AND LABOUR STILL TO GO
One big party – Fianna Fáil -  that supported Ireland’s blanket Bank bailout, the EU/IMF stitch-up last December,  the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which abolished the Irish púnt,  and every other [...]

“We have got a monetary federation. We need quasi-budget federation as well …
We need quasi-federation of the budget.”

- European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, The Guardian, 1-12-2010

“I deeply respect our Irish friends’ independence … but they cannot continue to say ‘come and help us’ while keeping a tax on company profits that is half [that [...]

A public enquiry is needed into how the Irish people have been turned into indentured debtors of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
We need to know this if we are ever to recover.  We need to know who was ultimately responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in, trapped inside the [...]

Open Europe
Press Summary Archive
11 October 2010
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/summary.aspx?id=1204
The Irish edition of the Sunday Times reported that Edmund Honohan, Master of the Irish High Court, has accused the Irish Parliament of failing to assert Irish legislation over new laws from Brussels and delegating much of the workload involved in scrutinising EU law to civil servants.

http://www.swp.ie/editorial/who-are-bond-holders/3669
Who are the Bond-holders?
SWP [...]

Audio file: Eamon Dunphy (”The Eamon Dunphy Show”: NewsTalk106fm) has Anthony Coughlan on with his panel of guests, to discuss the Irish and European economies, and the trials and tribulations of the Euro☚ (time -19:20; format - M4a/Quicktime/iTunes; date - May 16, 2010);
To access via iTunes, either:
☞ In your browser, click/enter - http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-national-platform-eu-research/id372343305 ☜ and [...]