Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

Despite what has been said on the other side of the House, Senator Terry Leyden has raised a fundamental issue in regard to the forthcoming referendum. As somebody who was actively involved in previous referendums, I advise the Government to tread very carefully in how it presents this issue to the people. The first referendum on the Nice treaty which was essentially a housekeeping exercise was lost because people believed their sons and daughters would be carried off to serve in a European army. That issue has since disappeared from the agenda of those who voted against the interests of the country on that occasion. That referendum was rejected because of campaigning by sectional interests opposed to Government policy, including nurses, taxi drivers and various others. I could read out a litany of such interests.

If anyone assumes this referendum will be embraced by the people without detailed debate and a quid pro quo for the State, he or she is gravely mistaken. It may sound like pork barrel politics, but there is a unique opportunity for the Government to tell the European Union that our bank debt is unsustainable in the medium to long term and that the country - I have said this repeatedly in the House - cannot continue to operate under the burden of that debt. Those who have been quick to criticise Fianna Fáil Administrations of the past must have been interested to hear a senior German MEP and former chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok, point out on "Prime Time" last night that the reason the European Union, including Ireland, was in its current state was the bank collapse of 2007 and 2008. Whatever mistakes Fianna Fáil might have made in government, the fundamental reason for our current difficulties is the activities of greedy banks, particularly the German banks. It is important to note that they are separate from the German people. I agree with Senator Aideen Hayden that we should not be seen to be expressing anti-German sentiments. The activities of German banks which flooded this and other countries with cheap and easy money, together with a poor regulatory regime, are the main reasons we find ourselves in our current position.

One can argue about the politics of the issue until the cows come home. What it comes down to is that the Government must let its European counterparts know that if the referendum is to be carried, the people must be given some hope they will get out from under the unsustainable and unacceptable bank debt. We could then operate within a fiscal treaty that would oblige us to adhere to the 3% deficit requirement. We should bear in mind in that regard that this was one of the few countries which ran a budget surplus up to the time of the collapse of the banking system which occurred as a consequence of the activities in the sub-prime market and of the toxic American banks. The sooner that narrative is engaged with, rather than merely firing shots about what Fianna Fáil did in government, the sooner we can move forward, as all of us wish to do, to remove this burden from the people and re-enter an era of prosperity.