Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the Vice President on attending this meeting. She is carrying out a very important function. I also compliment the Chairman on his opening remarks, which were interesting.

This situation reminds us of a number of matters. We have more referenda experience in this country than any other member state of European Union. We have given our approval or disapproval more often than anyone else and usually we have had to go back to the table and repeat the performance if we did not do it right the first time, to such an extent that our citizens are suspicious of us. They claim now that if we do not get the right response, we will go back to them repeatedly, and that is not good for democracy.

However, we passed one referendum which consented to the free movement of people, money, goods and services within the European Union. That was quite a long time ago. That was an important one, the implications of which the European Union did not fully examine in terms of what might happen in a crisis. What happened in the crisis is what we all know about. It appears, as Deputy Dooley said, that a number of countries were dictating the pace but they were dictating it to the weaker countries with obvious serious political consequences for the weaker countries. That was very worrying from the point of view of citizens, whom the Commissioner mentioned on a number of occasions, but it had a serious unnerving effect on our people. Allied to that, we as national parliamentarians had met our colleagues in Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and all the other member states and we found there were expressions of disunity and doubt by the elected members of the national parliaments for several years as to whether the European Union was going in the direction it was intended to go. We also raised some questions. The Commissioner mentioned the question of the lack of confidence, and that is from where it came but, more especially, it came from a lack of unity of purpose. It was perceived by people throughout Europe and by the Irish people during the course of the crisis that there was a lack of unity of purpose. Some countries wanted more of one thing and less of another. Some people wanted more involvement and integration and other countries wanted less. The Chairman and members will be aware of a serious issue, namely, that what integration means to many other European countries, especially those which have become accustomed to a federalised system in their own countries, does not necessarily mean the same to us.

We should also be careful about citizens' views as expressed to the national elected parliamentarians or to the European Parliament in that there is a big difference. If we undermine the confidence in the nationally elected parliamentarians, we will indirectly undermine the European process. Everyone requires greater powers, the European Parliament wants more powers, but what about more responsibility? What about taking political responsibility for what we do wrong or what we do right, as the case may be?

The final point I wish to make is an important one that was raised by the Commissioner. Nice 1 was about the losing of a Commissioner. We should never have got to the stage where any country sought or felt they had ownership of a Commissioner. Ms Reding and all Commissioners are supposed to be equally available to all member states without exception. Unfortunately, we moved from that to individualisation, which was a major weakness when the crisis came. I refer to Deputy Dooley’s point in that regard. Some countries felt they were obliged to give leadership because of their size and strength, but it had a seriously debilitating effect on the rest of us. We must learn from that.

Let us not forget that we had a European Central Bank, ECB. We can now ask what it was doing. It was representative of the eurozone member states but it was representing the European community globally, for the want of a better expression. It did not do so. It avoided its responsibilities. It shied away from the task it was supposed to do and as a result it weakened the European Union and its ability to deal with the crisis. I could go on about this but the Chairman will be pleased to know I will not. I have heard this debate for the past ten years at various fora throughout Europe. There was always talk of the need to do what we should do but we never did it. We almost paid the ultimate price because there were in Europe among the national parliamentarians in the past five years expressions by people elected to public office that were not in consort with the European ideal. They were far from it. We all know who they were.

As to whether there can ever be a successful European Union without a single currency, I believe there cannot. It is fundamental to the cohesiveness of what Europe is about. I say to those who say we can have a separate currency in the United Kingdom and the various other countries, that it will not work. I am sorry for going on for so long but that is my opinion based on what I have seen over my time in public life. It is a long time ago now since I first attended a meeting in Luxembourg.