Ms Barbara Nolan:

That is understood.

On Deputy Durkan's point about Euroscepticism, I agree it is a significant problem which seems to be spreading. It is linked to a disillusionment about politics in general. I attended a conference last week at which Professor Brigid Laffan from the European Institute in Florence had a very interesting graph which showed that across Europe there is a significant decline in trust in both national governments and in the European Union. In most cases, there is a greater decline in trust in the case of national governments than in the European Union, with the exception of possibly two or three countries, including Germany, where there is more confidence or trust in the national authorities than in the European Union. The general trend was extremely depressing.

One of the ways in which we can combat this trend is to make an effort to turn the economy around. The situation could be improved if economic conditions improved and things were going better in the economy and if unemployment levels decreased. The investment plan hopes to achieve these aims. It would also help if national politicians returning from meetings in Brussels would stop Europeanising failure and nationalising success. This is frequently the outcome at various European Council meetings and we see it all the time. We are the European Union; it is not something extraneous to us. The European Union is only the sum of its parts, the member states. We all make up the European Union. It would help if it could stop being treated as some extraterrestrial body without any particular ownership.