Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The statement the Taoiseach has just delivered claims that the past six months has seen enormous progress. Even more than is usual for a government given to daily praising its own actions, he has presented a picture of Ministers having delivered Europe to a new frontier. The Union is, he claims, growing stronger because of this leadership.

In the middle of this it is striking just how much the Taoiseach has not mentioned. In his review of the past six months, he has managed to completely ignore the fundamental direction of the European economy. He has declared himself absolutely satisfied with what has been achieved, yet the citizens of Europe see a very different picture.

During the past six months growth rates have fallen, recession has returned, unemployment has reached record levels and sovereign bonds have experienced their fourth worst month in more than 20 years. The evidence is overwhelming that the policy of co-ordinated austerity in all parts of Europe has failed and will keep failing, yet the response has been to double down on the policy. The Taoiseach's primary argument is that it is a great success to have closed as many files as possible. It a "never mind the quality feel the width" approach which sees reaching agreements as being more important than what is in them.

The agenda is exactly as was proposed in President Van Rompuy's presentation to the European Parliament last year when he laid out the work programme for 2013.

In normal times this would have been unexceptional, maybe even a welcome sign of stability, but these are not normal times. The scale of Europe's problems requires an urgency and ambition completely absent not only during our Presidency, but during the past four years. Nothing done in the past six months will change in any way the direction of Europe, create a new effort to achieve growth or address any of the deep flaws in the work of the Union that helped to create the crisis.

Ireland has delivered agreements to keep the push for austerity even where countries have had an alternative. Ireland has agreed to cut the Union's budget, to have those cuts focused on the Union's most important programmes and to keep the link between sovereign and financial debts. I will return to that point later. If the Taoiseach is satisfied with this and if he believes Europe has turned the corner, then he is spending too much time reading his own press releases.

As a result of the Lisbon treaty changes, the duties of the Presidency are significantly smaller than in the past and the absence of the major 2004 accession helped to ensure that costs could be significantly lower. Even with these changes the work of an EU Presidency has a major impact on all states, not only the smaller ones. Ireland has always handled them well because we give our best people responsibility, as the Taoiseach has outlined. Every Presidency since our first, in 1975, has been administered well. The daily work of our officials is unequalled by those of any other country not only in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but throughout Government, and officials have carried a heavy responsibility and delivered an impeccably administered Presidency. This work has rightly been praised in all parts of the Union.

However, for a Presidency to change the direction of Europe, it requires political leadership. This has been demonstrated in the past at a time when the Presidency was a much greater challenge. The 1984, 1990, 1996 and 2004 Presidencies each involved the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs achieving major moves forward on fundamental constitutional change within the Union. The 1984 and 2004 Presidencies in particular led the Council to overcome the belief that it was incapable of agreeing anything significant.

The Taoiseach claimed this morning that Ireland had overwhelmingly delivered on its Presidency objectives of stability, jobs and growth. Certainly, there has been a stability to the agenda, but with growth and employment forecasts for the coming years cut, the claim to have delivered on jobs and growth is clearly not true. A deflationary budget which cuts vital programmes will not deliver jobs and growth. The refusal to change existing economic policies will not deliver jobs and growth. The maintenance of deep structural flaws in the euro will not create jobs and growth.

A defining characteristic of this Government from the start has been the amount of time it puts into public relations. Politics before policy is its only consistent strategy. This has been brought to new levels during the Presidency and, in particular, during the past week. The Taoiseach has developed a deserved reputation for being the most partisan ever holder of his office. He finds it impossible to acknowledge the achievements of people from other traditions from either the recent or distant past.

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