Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat a Chathaoirligh. In fairness, that last issue is an incredibly serious one. If there were some sort of modality to deal with it in Europe, it would be very beneficial.

Over the years there was probably an element of the EU which was overly protective of the market, and its own rules on state aid and everything had to be thrown out the window in the past while with the pandemic. I imagine if anyone needed an argument for the necessity, for want of a better term, of big government, this showed that sometimes it is only the state that can do business, particularly in a period like this. There has obviously been a short-term curbing of those protections for the market, private enterprise and all the rest of it. However, I imagine there is a conversation at European level at this point on how some of that would have to be curbed into the future to give the state, and states working together on a Europe-wide basis, the capacity to deliver. In fairness, even though there were hiccups in the beginning, the vaccine scenario showed that even where there was not a competency but there was agreement and organisation, you could get serious business done which delivered for people.