Dr. Peter Rigney:

I came here to speak about issues at a European level and I will not deal with issues of national politics.

When the idea of reattaching the social dimension to Economic and Monetary Union was launched in October, it was done so in Brussels with great fanfare at a meeting attended by Mr. Barroso, Mr. von Rompuy and Mr. Andor. I also attended. According to my notes, Mr. Barroso stated the social dimension was not an add-on but an integral part and that citizens must see the benefits of the European project, the implication being that since the storm broke an increasing number of citizens had ceased to see the benefits of the European project and seemed disposed to vote for parties in 2014 which were outside the traditional club of the European Parliament such as the EPP, the socialists and democrats and ALDE. Perhaps it is the cynic in me, but I got the impression tht this might not have happened if the National Front had obtained fewer percentage points in the canton elections in France, but we are where we are and must work with it.

Looking to the future at a European level, my view is that now we have emerged from the bailout programme, we must start rebuilding our reputation and prevent our reputation from falling in other areas. This is important. A debate needs to start on the role of the ECB, which is a big mountain to climb because it is an article of faith in Germany. It is the Boston and Berlin issue put another way; the ECB needs to become more like the Federal Reserve and act as a lender of last resort. It needs to stop enjoying the privilege it has. It is said fear of inflation has been built into German DNA since the time it cost 1 million Deutschmark to buy a loaf of bread after which the rise of Hitler happened, but it is not quite that simple. That happened in 1923 and it took another ten years for Hitler to come to power. What brought him to power was the crash and the stagnation afterwards.

A very interesting seminar was held in Brussels in mid-October on the creation of a European system to pay part of, or the whole of, unemployment benefit. Commissioner Andor engaged a German foundation to run the numbers and it found that if this had been done in the past ten years, Germany, in particular, would have been neither a net contributor nor a net receiver. In other words, it would be contributing a lot now but would have received a lot earlier. Somebody stated it would require a fundamental treaty change and when I hear that phrase, I get a headache. It might be possible to do something along these lines in a reinsurance model.

The disappointing thing for all the young people who have left Ireland over the past five years is that they have actually deliberately not chosen the role of citizenship. The countries to which they tend to go are those that require a visa, where there is a lower platform of rights, such as Australia, Canada and the US, in that order. There are 155,000 vacancies for apprentices in Bavaria at the moment. That is a region that is Catholic and governed by a centre-right political party, so there should be a natural fit with us, but people would prefer to go to Sydney or Canberra. That is very disappointing for the advocates of European union because, when the first crisis happened, young Irish people tended to vote with their feet and say "No, thank you. I will go elsewhere." By the way, young Spanish people tend to go to Argentina and young Portuguese tend to take their chances with the oil boom in Angola. That is an example of people voting with their feet.

This is about the future. It is about where we go from here. How will this committee react in a year when we get a list of country-specific recommendations? For example, Sweden has been asked that the lower rate of VAT in the catering sector be reviewed to see if it produces anything. Does that sound familiar to anybody? The CSRs for Poland include a suggestion that, as it has a lot of young people on a succession of short-term contracts, this seems to be a treadmill rather than a ladder. How do we deal with that? We cannot make progress on all fronts at the same time, so the bet we will be putting down will be the debate on the privileged role of the European Central Bank and the European institutions and the debate about the privileged role of fighting inflation when the spectre that haunts us is one of deflation.