Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I do not think there is much point in my spending a Thursday afternoon relighting the referendum campaign. The fiscal treaty was not designed to correct bad practice in Ireland; rather, it was designed to provide fiscal rules across the eurozone and has now been endorsed by all parliaments in the eurozone. It is not designed specifically to fit an Irish case. The rules are important, but they are part of a general sequence of events. We have the six pack, the European semester, the two pack and the stability treaty. As views develop across Europe, we are moving all the time towards a tighter set of fiscal rules. That is because the looseness of the fiscal position in countries on the periphery is deemed to be the primary cause of the current crisis. Therefore, there has been a reaction to this. Part of the wholesale reform package is the six pack, as well as the introduction of an expenditure benchmark to limit growth in general government deficits.