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

I again thank the witnesses for their presentations and their focus in particular. A couple of questions come to mind. The comment, "Responses to the sovereign debt crisis have, thus far, been somewhat insufficient" is an understatement but of course, there are a number of reasons for that. They have been both insufficient and late and the lateness of the hour has been the biggest single factor. I will ask the witnesses a question I have asked a number of times. During the boom, we repeatedly heard that we could not control the economy in Ireland because interest rates were controlled from Europe and, as a result, they could not be varied and nothing at all could be done about that. All of this now seemingly falls flat because there are varying interest rates throughout the eurozone. This raises the question as to the reason we locked ourselves in on the basis that we had no control over our own interest rates and could not control inflation or whatever.

My next question is also an answer but I will pose the question. I have held the view for a long time that there will never be satisfactory economic, monetary, social and political cohesion in Europe until such time as there is a single currency right throughout the European Union. My case for so stating is the United States and asking how successful it would be if 20 different currencies circulated there. I believe it would not be in any way successful and could not succeed.

The final point I wish to raise relates to the financial transaction tax, Tobin tax or whatever one might call it. My view is that were all countries worldwide where financial services and trading takes place to adopt such a policy, that would be fine. However, if that is not done, the countries that do not adopt such tax obviously will have a distinct advantage over those which do. In the same way, countries that stay outside the eurozone but are within the European Union can have an advantage over their colleagues by adjusting their own currencies in respect of the euro. This has been done repeatedly and is being done in some countries even as we speak. Possibly this is even being done by some countries within the eurozone.