Professor Brigid Laffan:

I will say two things about the politics of constrained choice. Rather than putting the emphasis on constraint, I would put the emphasis on choice. Regardless of the EU's panoply of surveillance, how much tax a country applies, whom it taxes at what level and how, and how much it spends are entirely national decisions and will remain so. Rather than emphasise just constraint, we should recognise there will still be extraordinary choice. That means that domestic politicians must face up to the choice, in that it is not being imposed. All governing parties or parties aspiring to govern are within that space of constrained choice. In Europe we have seen the challenger populist parties engage in the politics of "You can have it all". While populism is the easiest form in politics, with globalised markets people cannot have it all because the financial markets will ensure that a country cannot fund itself.

In answer to the question about having no choice in exiting from the euro, I agree with Dr. Barrett about the danger of capital flight - not just international capital leaving a country, but a country's own population removing capital en masse without very stringent capital controls. I believe it would be really difficult and probably catastrophic. I do not believe countries would lightly contemplate leaving the eurozone. That does not necessarily mean we will not reach a time when the world is sufficiently stable that it might be contemplated, but I am not so sure.

The Deputy used the analogy of a patchwork quilt. A quilt usually has a nicely designed centre, and in the EU at the moment, at the centre of that quilt is the euro area, becoming the hardest of hard cores. It is not just a multi-speed Europe but also a multi-tiered Europe, and some countries will not join. Can the EU manage this? Up to now it has. It can manage because it must - there is such diversity in income levels in countries across the panoply, from the borders of Russia to southern Portugal, that it has no choice. However, differentiation is now an important feature of the EU and one that will continue to be part of the EU that evolves.

Deputy Kyne asked about anti-EU sentiment and the budget. In an interesting way, the new European semester will force budgetary systems in Ireland to become much more transparent and open. The history of budgets in Ireland is that the Minister for Finance would arrive with his bag and no one knew most of its contents beforehand.

In fact, it can open out the budgetary process in important ways advantage of which can be taken by national parliamentarians. National parliaments should engage directly with the Commission on its recommendations rather than with their national governments only.

I was asked about the UK and competence. My point was that the UK is engaged in a competence exercise currently. Every EU competence is being examined across Whitehall in preparation for a phase of renegotiation. There may well be a space as a result of the outcome of deliberation in the UK which overlaps with what is happening in the Commission. The Commission has a great deal more work to do and would not mind re-nationalising some elements of competence. There may be an overlap where the Commission and EU-27, as it will be with the accession of Croatia, meet the UK. There may be some opt-outs but not many. The UK will not be permitted an àla carteapproach. There will not be a single market and the-----