Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will start with what Deputy Durkan, Deputy O'Reilly and Senator Reilly said about the social consequences of high unemployment levels. Deputy Durkan drew parallels between current high levels of unemployment in Europe and what occurred in the 1930s. This is Europe Day and it is useful to recall that the European Community's founding fathers saw the development of the European project as a way of preventing a recurrence of what happened in the 1930s and 1940s when Europe ripped itself apart. Millions of lives were lost and appalling atrocities were committed then. The post-war idea was that we would agree a method of doing our business in Europe which was more civilised, democratic and grounded in the rule of law, democratic principles and human rights. In addition, economic difficulties would be resolved in that way.

We hear a great deal of understandable talk about the bureaucracy of Europe. While it is a pretty complicated way of reaching decisions through many layers, Europe tried the alternative and it was not pleasant. What we are doing now is trying to address the economic difficulties Europe faces. There are some parallels with the 1930s, in particular with regard to unemployment. We are addressing the problems we have in banking in a co-ordinated, co-operative way. There are a number of issues we must address, including what happened in banking. The big lesson we have had to learn over the last number of years is that what happens in banking in one country is not confined to one country - it is interconnected. For that reason, the Government has argued successfully that there had to be a banking union within the European banking architecture. That was agreed last June and we have been progressing it. Progress has been made during our Presidency on the single supervisory mechanism and we are making progress on the other two pillars. It comes back to the point raised earlier by Deputy Dooley as to why it is necessary to have a co-ordinated European approach to the regulation of the banking and financial sector. I hear many people asking if we are going too far with regulation. We must be careful not to get back to the kind of discussion, which has got us into trouble and which was so prevalent ten to 15 years ago, arguing for the advantages of decreased and light-touch regulation. That is what contributed to the mess. We are talking about appropriate regulation of banking and we are talking about it across the European Union. That is why we reached the CRD IV agreement to provide for a European-wide approach to bankers' pay, which has been an important issue in financial and popular debate.

Dealing with the unemployment situation in Europe is our priority. We have said that it is the major issue we must crack in the course of our Presidency. There is a particular problem in relation to youth unemployment, which is why we have promoted the idea of a youth guarantee. We were very pleased that provision was made in the multi-annual financial framework, or MFF, for €6 billion to give effect to that guarantee. To address Senator Reilly's remarks, the youth guarantee reflects what we have been trying to do in our national policy in Ireland anyway. The reforms to social protection and education are about that. The idea is that one's first day out of work will be one's first day on the way back into employment and involve a transition from social protection programmes to JobBridge to education and training programmes. The intention is that the youth guarantee will, when it has evolved, dovetail with what we are doing nationally.

Of course, all of these initiatives depend on us getting agreement on the MFF. Deputy Crowe raised that issue and asked how realistic it was to expect agreement during Ireland's Presidency. He talked about elections in one member state and how they might impact on agreement. My concern is not elections in a particular member state. Elections are always taking place which affect how a government might look at issues at a particular time. My great concern is that if we do not get agreement on the MFF before the summer, the European Parliament elections will be upon us and they are much more likely to have an impact. Following the summer, the attention of Members of the European Parliament will understandably turn towards the fact that they are standing for re-election next May. Due to the co-ordinated budgeting approach across Europe which is now taking place, the attention of national parliaments and governments will turn after the summer to their own national budgets and away from the European budget.

The difficulties that have arisen in relation to the MFF are twofold. First, the European Parliament has identified four areas in the MFF in which it wants to see improvements as to what is on the table. These include flexibility, a review of the MFF during its life, own resources and the unity of the budget. The Council is prepared to discuss these with the European Parliament and will hopefully reach agreement. Second, the European Parliament has indicated that it wants a draft amending budget for 2013. The Commission has said there is an amending budget of €11.2 billion, which it feels is required. That view is not subscribed to by all member states. The European Parliament has made it clear that agreement on the MFF is tied to agreement on the draft amending budget for 2013. We have put forward a two-stage process for the draft amending budget. We have said that there should be an initial, up-front financial commitment for 2013 and then a commitment based on what is documented and supported at a later stage in the year. We agreed last Monday that we will progress discussions in parallel on the amendments the EU Parliament wants to see to the MFF and on the draft amending budget. We are anxious to conclude both agreements during our Presidency. The two go together. The Parliament says agreement on the MFF is conditional on agreement on the draft amending budget. It works the other way as well. If there is no agreement on the MFF and the Parliament is not in a position to conclude an agreement, it is clear that there will not be an agreement on the draft amending budget either.

When one thinks about it, the MFF is €960 billion. We have talked about stimulus, which that budget represents. The sum of €960 billion includes provision for Cohesion fund spending and all of the infrastructure projects around Europe which generate employment. It includes provision for the Common Agricultural Policy, the importance of which we know in Ireland. It includes commitments on research, innovation, Horizon 2020, the education and training and the youth guarantee. If there is no agreement on the MFF, Europe will revert to annualised budgeting. The problem with annualised budgeting is that one cannot plan multi-annual programmes on an annualised basis. Research programmes are, by their very nature, multi-annual as are major infrastructure projects and many of the projects which attract Cohesion Fund funding. It is not possible to plan these other than on a multi-annual basis. This is not just a matter of agreeing figures - it is about jobs, investment and projects in individual member states, including Ireland. Jobs are riding on the MFF, which is why it is very important that we get agreement.

We can try to persuade, which we are working night and day to do. Meetings are taking place at official level in Brussels this week. I will be back in Brussels on Monday to lead the negotiations on the MFF. It is very important that we conclude the agreement. There are investment programmes to consider. I have been asked by Senator Reilly, among others, for a timetable on the youth guarantee but we must get the MFF settled first. It is part and parcel of that. There are many people who will argue that to be effective, the €6 billion provision for the youth guarantee must be front-loaded. One cannot front-load it unless there is a multi-annual agreement.

I was asked what the accounting directive is.

Political agreement has been reached on the accounting directive. The directive’s purpose is to ensure reporting requirements are proportionate and reduce the amount of red tape with which small and medium-sized companies, SMEs, have to cope. It is basically about getting agreement at European level which would exempt SMEs from some of the onerous types of reporting required.

On the issue of Lebanon, we have had a discussion at the Foreign Affairs Council about the impact of the crisis in Syria on neighbouring countries, including Lebanon. I contributed to the discussion and drew attention to the fact Ireland has a particular interest in Lebanon due to the presence of Irish troops in peacekeeping missions there. Deputy Crowe described it accurately about the additional 500,000 refugees in Lebanon which has a potentially destabilising effect there. The European External Action Service is working to support Lebanon. This is very much part of Europe’s response to the crisis in Syria. If anything in the discussions around Syria, there has been a much increased concentration of the impact of the crisis on neighbouring countries and the associated humanitarian issues such as more refugees.