Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)

The European Union and its subset, the eurozone, are at a crossroads. We must have a debate on where we are going because we are not doing so at the moment. Currently, we are lunging from one crisis to the next with no overall plan. We must not sleepwalk into what are potentially the greatest changes to this nation state since its foundation. It is clear what eurozone countries must do for the currency to survive. There must be full fiscal and political union, and transfers of wealth to less well-off areas, in other words, a united states of Europe. This is not new thinking. It is something people such as Anthony Coughlan, who opposed the euro project, have called for since its inception. It is also a fact of which anyone with a brain in the newly formed Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour Party alliance was well aware. This is something the "Yes to every euro referendum" brigade have never admitted. The implications of such a move are immense. It would mean the end of Ireland as an independent state in terms of sovereignty, and let no one say otherwise or they are not telling the truth, just as the truth was not told to the people at the time we joined the euro in the first place. This is why we must debate the issue truthfully, but only if sovereignty means anything to this Government. The laying of wreaths at memorials for the men and women of 1916 suggests the Government does care. Its actions in dealing with Europe, however, show the Government is hell-bent on creating servitude rather than sovereignty.

Angela Merkel wants the currency to survive in such a way as to help the German economy, but its survival appears to do nothing for us. Germany needs to wake up to this fact and pay the price for the benefits it secures from the euro. The price is that Germany should subsidise the periphery, something there is no sign of it doing. The price is also that power should move away from individual nation states such as Germany and France. There was a time when I believed we were in a union of equals. We were told during the debate on the Lisbon treaty that if we voted "Yes" we would be at the heart of Europe. What a joke that seems to be now. When we look for fairness on bank debt, we are now told by the same people that we are irrelevant and not big enough. We were meant to be at the heart of Europe. This is something we were promised by the current Government. The European institutions have been bypassed and replaced with bilateral meetings and lunches between Germany and France.

One might have imagined that Mr. Hollande would be different but the first thing he did following his election was to go to meet Angela Merkel. One might think was the right thing to do but one does not do that in a club. If two members out of six in my local GAA club had a meeting by themselves, the club would fall apart, and that applies in the case of a GAA club rather than something on which all our lives will depend in future. Regardless, they meet up and do whatever they want, but not for our benefit.

I believe we should negotiate a withdrawal from a system based on bullying rather than equality. Unfortunately, however, at a time when we need a strong negotiator we have a Taoiseach who cannot even inspire confidence in a sizeable minority of his party. At election time we were told by him he would do something about the bank debt. He has not even bothered to ask. It says everything that although we have elected a Taoiseach to go and do that for us, the ordinary people in Ballyhea, County Cork, must take up the battle and do it for themselves. It is the equivalent of a father instructing one of his children to do the shopping and feed the other children while he spends the rest of the day in the pub. We expected more and I and my children expect more in future. The Taoiseach must do a better job. Otherwise he should be prepared for annihilation at the next election.

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