National Platform Date:10.10.2010

We must re-assure the bondholders about the economy'. This line is trotted out daily in the Irish media. But who are these bondholders? The strange feature of current debates is that the Irish people never get told to whom we are supposed to pay all these debts. On Saturday 2 October the Financial Times published data on bondholders for Irish Government debt.

The figures relate to July 2010 when European banks were asked to provide information to the Committee of European Banking Supervisors as part of its stress tests. Although the data is a few months old, we may reasonably assume that the pattern has not changed when interest rates shot up to 6.5%.

It should be noted that the figures below pertain only to Irish State debt. We still do not know who are  the bondholders of Anglo-Irish or the wider banking system because this is supposed to be 'commercially secret' information.

Read it carefully and you will get an insight into the shocking skulduggery that is going on here.
 
TOP 10 BANKS WHO HOLD IRISH GOVERNMENT BONDS

Royal bank of Scotland £4.3 billion
Allied Irish Banks €4.1 billion
Bank of Ireland €1.2 billion
Credit Agricole €929 million
HSBC $816 million
Danske Bank €655 million
BNP Paribas €571 million
Groupe BPCE €491 million
Societe Generale €453 million
Banco BP1 €408 million
 
The Royal Bank of Scotland is owned by the British Government and former Irish Atrorney General  and  EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland was one of its directors until 2009. Sutherland often lectures the Irish people on the need for cutbacks - but he never reveals this link.

The big surprise, however, is that the two biggest bondholders are Irish Banks. The people of Ireland have already put €7 billion in these two banks - but they then screw us twice by lending back our own money at higher interest rates.

Imagine Irish taxpayers delivering billions at the front door of the bank and then the directors scurrying around the back door to lend us back our own money and to call for more sacrifices. It is time to end this madness now.