Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful to Deputy Thomas Pringle and the Technical Group for tabling the motion. It is a subject that was overdue for debate in this House and I hope that after this debate it will be debated further by the media and the people, as it is one of the most important issues facing us.

Deputy Olivia Mitchell accused Deputy Thomas Pringle of sedation, which is incorrect. It is more correct to say the majority of parties in this House are guilty of sedating the people. For the past two decades they have sleepwalked the people into a situation where we are now told we will all starve, unless we opt for a complete united Europe. We are told that when we vote against European treaties, we do not understand them. This evening Government Deputies have told us we do not understand what is good for us. Deputy Fergus O’Dowd told us to have sense and wake up, yet that is the very reason parties such as the UKIP, the UK Independence Party, are doing so well in Great Britain. Parties such as the Labour Party in Britain and the Labour Party here are ignoring genuine concerns about how the European project is going. Saying to people they do not understand is driving them into a frenzy and getting them more annoyed. They do understand when they see their children are out of work and neither the European project, the Lisbon treaty nor the European Stability Mechanism has delivered jobs. No matter how many times the Government tells them to wake up and have a bit of sense, it will not work, unless the problems created are solved.

With regard to the eurozone, it is time to do the proverbial or get off the pot. It has to be one or the other. Either we go hook, line and sinker for full fiscal union or we move in the other direction. The last opinion poll on this issue showed 25% of people in the State believed we should move in the other direction. It is bad enough now with how we are dictated to by the European Union. If we opt for full fiscal union, it will tell us everything we should do and we will have no choice. There are two straps on the straitjacket already. Opting for full fiscal union will put another one on it and leave us in serious trouble.

We were told by Deputy Harrington, to provide some reassurance, that to understand how wonderful the euro was, we should look at where we were.

That is not the best way to reassure people. One of the reasons we are experiencing massive debt is we joined the eurozone. I acknowledge we had rubbish Governments, which did not help. We are experiencing massive unemployment. I am looking at where we are. Is that meant to encourage us?

Let us look at where we were, a time to which Deputy Noonan hopes we can return, when we had real growth. At the time, during the 1990s, we had our own currency and we were not connected to sterling. Ireland had just pulled out of the ERM. We were connected to no one but ourselves and we made the decisions. Economic growth between 1993 and 1999 was 6% on average. We have never experienced that without imaginary growth generated by housing bubbles and unlimited credit. We have proven we can go it alone. It is not the case that eurozone members only buy our goods; we buy an equal volume their goods. It is not as if they will get thick with us and not sell their products to us anymore. Trade will continue, as it should.

We should have a little more confidence in this country. We have brilliant things going for us. We have every right to be as confident as the Swiss, Norwegians, Swedish and Icelanders, who all have their own currency. We have more going for us and it is time the Government parties stopped putting us down and saying we cannot survive. We can survive on our steam if we give it a chance.

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