Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

There are two facts with which no Member of the House can disagree. First, no one wants to be at the behest of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Second, the only way to claw ourselves out of the problem we are in is by job creation. However, this is where the agreement of Members comes to a sharp end.

Two trains of thought seem to divide the House at this point. One view is that we can create jobs by restructuring, retasking and resourcing some of our enterprise agencies to create an internal economy. The other is that we should default unilaterally. However, we cannot default and continue to operate unless we take a pan-European approach, as Deputy Ó Cuív has said. In time, a pan-European approach will have to be worked out. Since the Government took office, Ministers have been going everywhere they can on a diplomatic and trade mission to let everyone know we are a country that must export. The mistake we made, which is well documented, was to think we were so brilliant that we could survive as a domestic economy without doing what we had done for generations, which was to build a competitive export economy.

Deputy Ó Cuív missed the point when he said our €150 problem was only a pimple on the nose of the ECB. It was not. The ECB bought into the mantra that it could lend into this economy and that Ireland could sustain that level of debt. For that reason, there is an onus on the ECB to work with us on an ongoing basis. The involvement of the troika in Ireland's affairs is reviewed on a quarterly basis. This must be seen as a work in progress. It cannot be seen as a deal that is set in stone with no ongoing renegotiation, review or amendment. It will finally dawn on our European partners that the only way for the eurozone, or euro project, to survive is by a restructuring. This can happen in several ways.

The euro itself is a new project and is in need of fine tuning. Not every member state of the EU is a member of the eurozone. This has been a particular problem for Ireland. Our biggest trading partner is in another currency area and was in a position to devalue when the euro was not devalued. Our other big strategic partner is the United States, and the US dollar did the same thing. Ireland was hamstrung by not being able to make those decisions. With regard to the euro project, we must be either in it or out of it.

If we are to create jobs, and we must reassure the world that Ireland is open for business, we must reform those structures in which the troika have no input. Last night, the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party heard that 400 potential jobs in a call centre in a part of the country, which is not my constituency, are jeopardised by a single appeal to An Bord Pleanála by a notifiable organisation. As there is no deadline date for the planning decision the project has been thrown into jeopardy. This is something we can reform internally, and must reform. We can do the same with our bankruptcy laws. People who were persuaded, by financial institutions and on foot of fundamentally sound business plans, to take risks, to borrow money and to get into the property market now find themselves in distress. These people are excluded from business for 12 years by the most out-of-date law in Europe. We must review this law. The programme for Government states review of this law is Government policy.

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