Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not see this as being part of the so-called austerity agenda to which the Deputy refers. A criticism that was correctly made of the eurozone during the crisis was that it did not have the instruments or policy tools available to help individual member states to respond to the economic shocks or difficulties they were facing. The Commission is now bringing forward two different tools to allow member states to do that but if that money is going to be made available to countries to help them to deal with particular shocks, there must be a degree of conditionality attached. If we find ourselves in a position in a number of years time where Irish taxpayers' money is going into these funds and is being used in countries other than our own, then the Oireachtas will expect that funding to be used in a way that meets certain criteria. That is what is at the heart of this matter. Far from seeing this as compounding the worst of the architecture of the past, for me this is about trying to create new tools that were not available in the past but which we may need in the future.