Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is certainly in Ireland's interest that Europe would grow at much stronger rates than at present. Some European countries are in recession at the moment and, indeed, we are one of the stronger countries in terms of growth rates. We had a growth rate of 1.4% last year, better than the budget provision of 0.7% for this year and somewhere around the middle of the forecast for next year. We will see in a fortnight's time what the figures will be. Obviously, if we have stronger growth rates our tax take will increase, our deficit will decrease and more people will go back to work. Our model is export-led growth and because of that we need growth in the European Union because Europe is such a big customer of ours. We need growth in Europe to get maximum effect from the model of recovery we are using. Approximately 20% of our exports go to the United States of America, a further 20% go to the United Kingdom but 40% go to the European Union, with the remainder going to the rest of the world. One can see from those figures the importance of growing European economies in terms of demand for Irish exports of both goods and services. We would like to see a European solution that addresses growth and jobs, and the Taoiseach has said on a number of occasions that the main theme of the Irish Presidency will be the growth and jobs agenda.

The Deputy asked how Europe is going at the moment. It is more settled than it was six months ago but many problems remain to be addressed. The Greek problem continues but we hope that progress will be made on that in the coming weeks. Spain still has its difficulties, as Deputies will know from reading the newspapers. Italy, too, has its own difficulties. Places like Cyprus and Slovenia have very big banking problems. Individual countries within the EU all have their own programmes for strengthening their own economies. The difficulties in Europe are not behind us but significant progress has been made. The next big European project is banking union. That should be very helpful to the integrity of the eurozone and the wider ECOFIN zone. We will see how that develops and how rapidly it can be put in place.