Dear President McAleese,

Last Sunday I returned from a trip to Dachau which opened outside Munich in 1933. Dachau was built as a concentration camp to house those who first objected to radical early departures by the Government of the National Socialists. Pastor Martin Niemöller, one of the lucky few who survived the deaths of 250,000 fellow prisoners in Dachau, left a warning note to free thinkers everywhere to try to explain the strange acquiescence of German intellectuals as their country was slowly subjugated.

First they came for the communists - and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists- and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews-and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me -and there was no one left to speak out for me.

To satisfy EU demands to protect powerful German and French banks from sharing in their responsibility for fuelling the Irish property bubble, the Finance Bill (no 2) 2011 has crossed a crucial first line. Sure, plain as day that the line the Irish Government is crossing in 2011 is nothing like very many lines the Nazi’s would cross - but it’s not too unlike their first radical departures.

This is the forced appropriation of savings from hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women who’ve put money into retirement funds. This is not a tax on future profit - it is a rewriting of the past, a back tax on capital already saved from past income during years where those many conscientious savers who elsewhere contributed their legitimate requirement to the exchequer. There is no difference between the capital in a deposit account or the capital in a retirement fund, merely a set of operating rules and tax treatment. By crossing this line the Government is openly accelerating the loss of money overseas. That it is choosing to do so without clarifying its intentions with regards to future appropriation of capital from cash deposits at Irish banks, Credit Unions and An Post, is as telling as it is worrying.

In a chilling departure the proposed legislation openly targets trustees who hold pension assets by threatening them, for each day delayed, with a punitive daily interest rates of 0.0219%  PLUS a fine of €380 per day. This is without precedent and is an open act of hostility and aggression to those who would, otherwise, question the right of the Government to appropriate savings by asking their trustees to seek the protection of the courts. That’s why the Finance Bill has been crafted this way - in the certain knowledge that this hammer will discourage any individual citizen from standing up for himself or herself.

The first tranche of savings is expected to be handed over on July 25^th next and if it’s delayed by just one month the loss to the saver is nearly €11,500 - a figure greater than the entire average value of retirement funds accumulated by those under 35.  This is an abhorrent abuse of power by a privileges elite whose own pension scheme has been ring-fenced.

That’s why President McAleese, I am writing to ask you to call The Council of State and refer this abhorrent Bill to The Supreme Court. I feel sure many of my fellow citizens will follow suit by writing to you at Áras an Uachtaráin -and that the ghost of Martin Niemöller would concur.

Eddie Hobbs