We talked to Indepdent MEP candidate, Diarmuid O’Flynn, who is running in the European Elections in Ireland South.
Diarmuid decided to run because from very early in his campaign, as he failed to get his message out through a government-spinning national media, as he failed to get a government who had promised to fight against bullying of the EC/ECB, he decided he had to take action himself and bring his case directly to Europe.
“We did that, and the Ballyhea group has been to the ECB HQ in Frankfurt, we’ve been to Brussels on four occasions and met the European Commission’s senior economic adviser, the European Council President Van Rompuy’s senior economic adviser, the Chair of ECON (the Economics & Monetary Affairs Committee) Sharon Bowles MEP, even senior officials of the ECB itself. From those discussions we established that a) there is goodwill for Ireland and b) we are the only ones to have asked for the writeoff of the Promissory Note bonds debt, that’s €31bn, almost the entire tax take for a full year. Having got that far as a member of this small band, I believe we could achieve a hell of a lot more if I went back there with a mandate from Ireland South, along with many, many more like-minded MEPs, and went a-knocking again on the door of the ECB.”
The key issues of Diamuird’s campaign can be found on his website, www.diarmuidoflynn.com, but in a few words they are:
1) the bank debt
2) the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)
3) the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Treaty (TTIP) with its own dangerous and unnecessary inbuilt court system
4) Regulation of banks and the finance industry
5) Global taxation, closing the tax avoidance loopholes for the giant corporations
6) the Euro, an honest assessment of where we’re at, whether or not Ireland should stay in or withdraw in an ordered and controlled fashion.
Diarmuid said his campaign has gone very well and he was connected well with the electorate.