Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I will pick up on a few of the points, none of which is particularly relevant to my Department but which, none the less, are welcome to be heard. Getting an understanding from our European counterparts has been one of the priorities of the Government from day one. As I told the committee previously, there are three strands to our economic policy. The first, which is the most talked about, is working towards balancing the budget, which is the 2.9% deficit by 2015. We must do that because we cannot continue to borrow.

Equally, we need to have a jobs and growth strategy. I have announced the first phase of that. That will be funded in the ways I indicated and will have a significant jobs impact from next year on. We need to run out more phases of that. Importantly, we have put the jobs and growth agenda on the European agenda. Our voice is being heard increasingly and the jobs and growth agenda is now a formal part of the Heads of Government Council meeting. There is a particular focus on jobs. As bad as we are, and we are in a difficult situation, especially on the unemployment front, it is frightening to look at a country such as Spain where youth unemployment is well over 50%. We need a social policy to deal with that.

The third strand of our economic policy has been to renegotiate the terms of the deal, and particularly to disconnect the banking debt from the sovereign debt.