Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I only want to ask the Taoiseach if he can explain to the House why this committee has not met. The Government is nearly 12 months in office. I am genuinely shocked and taken aback at the fact that the committee has not met. We have been reminded time and again in this House of the gravity of the eurozone crisis and the enormous challenge facing Europe. Great Britain is staying out of a fiscal treaty, which was hurriedly agreed at the insistence of the German and French governments because of their domestic political agendas. It beggars belief that there has not been any interdepartmental response through this committee to the new fiscal compact treaty that, for instance, a position paper does not exist within the Department of Finance or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in terms of the implications of this treaty which, on my party's reading of it, would suggest an impact on fiscal policy for the next 15 years and beyond. This is shocking. It probably illustrates more than anything the degree to which-----

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