Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As part of our Presidency we put growth and employment at the top of our agenda and that is reflected in the approach Ireland takes throughout. In the heat of the crisis most of the attention was on ECOFIN. It meets every month and it tends to have many more tools in its armoury in terms of fiscal co-ordination and so on. There is a sense that the employment Ministers need to catch up. We have started to introduce scoreboards as well so that there is a social scoreboard, so to speak, being factored into the discussion as well as a public finance scoreboard.

There has also been a sense, and it would not affect us to any great degree, that the discussion on wages and pensions must take account of heavy commitments in terms of pensions and that there is a big pensions challenge. It is clear there has been some friction on those issues between employment Ministers, who might have one set of concerns, and finance Ministers. In terms of what has been worked out, the two committees, EPSCO and ECOFIN would have the capacity to present on an equal basis. That was brokered through our own work last year and worked much better last year under our Presidency than it had in the previous years where the employment Ministers felt they were not getting a fair say. It has improved, and I believe it will continue to improve. We have statutory recognised committees in Europe that report to the social committee and the employment committee, which jointly consider the country-specific recommendations before they go to EPSCO and ECOFIN. That process has strengthened the say of the employment Ministers.