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

There is a general debate. Commissioner Ollie Rehn got involved in that debate, according to an article I read last week. The economic theory underpinning it is that if the periphery countries in difficulty are all running fiscal programmes to reduce their deficits and move towards balanced budgets and surpluses and if at the same time the strong creditor countries are running very large surpluses, all of Europe, as an economic unit, will run a very big current account surplus. I saw figures showing that the big current account surplus was headed for about 3.5% in 2014 which would be a very significant surplus, the effect of which would be to make the euro stronger than, maybe, would be desirable under market conditions. Therefore, there would be a very strong euro which would adversely affect exports. That would be the economic theory and that the European Union internally should have a greater balance between the deficit countries and surplus countries because in the medium term it is tenable for the whole unit to run surpluses in a manner which would excessively strengthen the euro, strengthen the currency, which would adversely affect the European model of export led growth. That is the general theory. A discussion is taking place on the issue but I have not seen any proposals yet.