Mr. Luke 'Ming' Flanagan:

I reassure Deputy Bernard J. Durkan that there will be elections in May 2019 and that he will have an opportunity to rehire or fire us. A little like the Commission, we can be got rid of, too, and the Deputy will have plenty of opportunities to do so.

I am a little worried that we have been designated as a special case because the last time the European institutions designated us as a special case we ended up with a debt of tens of billions of euro. Some would like to say it disappeared into thin air, but it did not. As a result of our being designated as a special case, in the past two years we borrowed €6 billion. On what did we spend it? We spent it on nothing. We eviscerated it and got rid of it. We, therefore, need to be wary about being granted special case status. If a dog on my estate bites a child, it will be lucky to get a second chance. We have been more than bitten, we have been devoured. Therefore, we need to be wary.

Deputy Frank O'Rourke asked about the position of other MEPs. I presume he meant their position on the future of Europe. A particular MEP, Guy Verhofstadt, the lead negotiator on behalf of the European Parliament, is quite clear. Option No. 5 would not go far enough for him. He wants to sit down beside people to tell them what they should eating for dinner. That is the sort of European Union he wants and that is where it is inclined to go. At our group meeting Jean-Claude Juncker was clear enough on where he wanted it to go, as is Emmanuel Macron. They all want to move towards further integration. People might think this is wonderful, but we have to have a debate on the issue.

I tried to establish when the discussion on the future of Europe would take place by asking Commissioner Phil Hogan, Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and the Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs, but each and every one of them could not tell me much about it. We were promised that, to encourage debate, the European Commission, together with the European Parliament and interested member states, would host a series of debates on the future of Europe in European cities and regions to engage with national parliaments, local and regional authorities and civil society at large. Having attempted to establish when and where these debates will take place, I am on the verge of giving up because no one who should know about them seems to knows anything about them. Whether people are in favour of option one, two, three, four or five, we have to have this discussion. I have to have it because my children will be living in the European Union and I want it to be the best possible. If we are not going to discuss the issue, if we are going to be afraid of and run away from it, I can only conclude it will not be good for us. It terrifies me that even a country such as ours which supposedly is 88% in favour of EU membership is afraid to discuss it. If we are that much in favour of it, we should not only not be afraid to discuss it, we should also hear what the dates of the meetings are, as opposed to hearing from the Vice President of the European Parliament that nothing really will happen and that people will hold their own private meetings. The debate needs to be held in public, not in the dark.

Do not mix up correlation and causation. One would swear that if we had not joined the European Union in 1973, the iPhone would never have been invented and that we would still be driving around in 20 diesel tractors. No, we would not. Things would have changed. It should be remembered that we had peace before what happened in Nice. Next time someone says there have been no wars on the continent of Europe, tell him or her to have a little respect for the people who lived in the former Yugoslavia. I think we can call what took place a war. God knows, there was enough blood spilled.