Ms Ann Cahill:

I thank the Chairman. I will start at the beginning. Ireland held a referendum on whether to join the EU in 1972. I remember it was the first time I had a vote and I voted "No". The world has changed, the facts have changed and I have changed. The EU of farms and fish we joined grew into an amazing experiment and bit off more than its leaders could chew. Now they are out of their depth and desperately trying to manage a creation they do not understand and an electorate that understands less.

The economic crisis removed any semblance of anybody being in charge. They say the Germans are excellent at creating a real situation to test a hypothesis. To an extent, this is the laboratory we have been living in for the past five years.

People remember where they were when JFK was shot. Although I do not, I do recall the moment when Chancellor Merkel announced everyone would look after their own banks. It meant solidarity, as a core principle of the EU, was at an end. All those Structural Funds were fine but now we were all set adrift with our own little share of the euro in our fists. The Germans bailed out their banks and we bailed out ours but we should not think for a moment that Germany has bought our line that we have been hard done by or that the construction of the euro was to blame. They have not. Let us reflect on the realities. They said "No" to retrospective money for the €32 billion we put in our banks, "No" to lengthening of maturities of bailout loans to the 45 years Greece has got, and "No" to OMT or cheap credit lines from the ESM without conditions.

As the eurozone ship shudders, rudderless on the stormy sea, battered by markets and investors with their agendas, the only person with a vision for Europe and capable of implementing it is Angela Merkel. She has had eight years to think about it and it has been forged in the heat of her battles with her parliament, her party, the opposition and her constitutional court. This lady has a habit of doing what she says she will do and she says she will have treaty change after the German elections in September, after the European Parliament elections next May and in the run-up to David Cameron's promised referendum in 2015. Her aim is to save Europe from Germany and Germany from Europe. She knows, as do many of her parliamentarians, that it is not very democratic to have the Bundestag's budget committee deciding every cent that goes to another sovereign eurozone country. Her constitutional court has told her that Ireland having roughly two MEPs for every one for Germany in the European Parliament means it is not a democratic body. She does not want Germany to be the paymaster, or have to make up more rules as she goes along to keep us at bay. There will not be full recapitalisation of banks by the ESM, perhaps for 20 years. There will be a phasing in, but not the break between sovereign and banks courtesy of EU taxpayers' money that many dreamt of. Bank deposit and resolution funds are in danger of being pushed off into the horizons of time. Germany believes that if the EU is not responsible, then the EU should not be liable. For the EU to be liable in the future requires deeper integration, with political and economic union in a federal EU, styled on Germany, the country that was never centralised but, like Europe, is made up of independent states and which will still retain much of that independence.

Ireland will be an increasingly small voice in the new Europe. The Irish have long known that if we are not strong, we must be clever. Up to now that cleverness has been concentrated on big business and big money. Like mercenaries, we hope to take part of the spoils. We are not universally admired for this. We are castigated for allowing companies use our tax system to evade tax while we look for cheap loans from the EU. They wonder why we refuse to adopt the financial transactions tax, FTT, which would extend our tax on share dealings to derivatives. They do not buy the job loss argument.

Now with our economic miracle a thing of the past, our recklessness a given and our scrambling back up the credit rating ladder a wonder, we need to look at how we will exercise power in an EU that is hands-on with our budget. We will be forced to change our business taxation system. Members can read the OECD reports and other reports building the pressure as the IMF shies away from bailing out Cyprus and its money-laundering banks.

As Ireland knows from its UN experience, power can come from having a principled stance on issues. With the fabric of democracy in Europe now becoming an acute issue as a result of the crisis of political economy, as Italy has just illustrated, President Michael D. Higgins said in his recent speech at the Sorbonne that we must turn to critical thought if we are to be free to put our ethical stamp on society, place our economies within a frame of ethical culture and build an inclusive Europe. He pointed out that Europe is facing a social, cultural and political crisis. Politics risks losing its legitimacy among citizens if it diverts responsibility to unaccountable technocracy or the mysterious unaccountable marketplace. In case members think our brilliant politician-academic is dreaming, here is another politician, Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the war to end slavery:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthral ourselves, and then we shall save our country.