Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I hope I do not repeat anything he said or anything in Deputy O'Reilly’s lengthy contribution. I will try to furrow a new path of questions. I wish the Minister of State the best of luck in his new job. He gave us a lengthy report and I have some questions that do not necessarily flow with his presentation. It is often repeated that for Europe to develop, grow and work its way out of the crisis, we must strengthen its competitiveness. Although I read it regularly, I do not fully understand what it means. Could the Minister of State explain it to me? While we all understand what it means to be competitive, in which areas is Europe uncompetitive? What are we trying to achieve by way of competitiveness? Where are we failing to compete with other markets? Could the Minister of State give some examples?

On fiscal matters, I was impressed when I heard the Italian Presidency speak of flexibility in fiscal prudence, that we could possibly borrow more outside the strict constraints with a view to injecting the funds into job creation. The Irish Government may have given some sort of tacit support to that statement. What are the Minister of State's personal views on it? We have come through an horrendous time here and are coming out the other end. The performance of 17 EU countries has been monitored and worries were expressed about the French and Slovenian economies that there was a risk of non-compliance with the budgetary targets. Are we to be reassured by anything more recent that the French are on target? We had heard terrible things about Slovenia, that they were going to go for a bailout.