Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

We had a huge amount of different submissions during the course of our call for submissions on these particular COM proposals. One of them was from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity. It focused on the fact that this debt financing model is unfit for purpose.

It literally said member states will be forced into fiscal austerity should the debt obligations incurred under the SAFE programme push the fiscal balance into the excessive deficit procedure. That is very interesting. Ms Ni Bhriain mentioned it. I assume the burden will fall on all member states if the debt cannot be repaid. Could Ms NÍ Bhriain comment on that? I will come to Ms Kinney about something else afterwards.

The concern relates to austerity. We have seen what austerity looks like. It means cutting essential public services. So many communities are still feeling the impact of austerity on this State. There is that aspect of things, but there are also more. It was either this committee or the budgetary oversight committee of the previous Dáil – I believe Senator Higgins was a member with me – that examined the issue of the fiscal rules. We very much pushed for amendments to fiscal rules for environmental purposes, and also purposes related to the likes of housing. Maybe Ms Kinney could come in on that. My understanding is that fiscal rules are based on local budgets rather than EU budgets, but we are discussing huge sums of money that will have an impact on debt. We are constantly being told we need to stick to the 3% rule. Where does that really leave us in the context in question?