Ms Ann Cahill:

It is interesting that the Chairman mentioned debts. Two or three days ago, I received a document of 18 or 20 pages from the largest trade union federation in Germany. I thought it was interesting that it was called "A Marshall Plan for Europe". The people of Germany may or may not remember that loan, but that is beside the point. We think things work on the basis of "I am good to you, so therefore you owe me one". They do not think like that. They think very much along the lines of "Right is right and wrong is wrong". They think that a person who incurred a silly debt should pay it - that a person who does something wrong should suffer - and that is it. They are quite unsentimental about this and do not offer any apologies for it. Why would they?

It was interesting to hear Senator Burke speaking about the way certain things are treated. They think we are all grown up and they expect us to behave as though we are all grown up. We sometimes think we are grown up and we sometimes think we are not. We have to get our act together. It is all very nice to be the little pet in the class - to think the crumbs are just fine - but that is no longer where it is at. The EU has outgrown its incarnation as a lovely thing that encouraged us all to dance in the meadows under the summer sun. It has got serious now. It is a big animal. What we do affects it and what it does affects us. We are all "us". We need to stop thinking about it as we used to. It is here, it is now and it is our reality. In the future, we will look back on this as our history.

Senator Burke spoke about legislation. It was well signalled in the run-up to the Lisbon treaty that it would all be very fine for member states to get their wish and have everything referred to them, as long as they had an idea of the amount of work that would be involved and the number of people who would be required to do it.

I remember reading a figure estimating the number of additional staff the Oireachtas would need to deal with European legislation and it is clear that these additional staff have not been provided. They find it very difficult to do much of this work in Brussels, not to speak of national parliaments. One must secure additional resources before proceeding with this suggestion. Mr. Whelan spoke of changing systems. Without more resources, the Oireachtas would end up making amendments to legislation on the basis of information provided by lobby groups.

We do not expect too much. On the contrary, we do not expect enough of ourselves. We are used to being the cute hoor in the pack and that position does not wash as it is not culturally interchangeable. When tourists take a bus and a fellow on the bus makes jokes, they do not understand his accent much of the time, which is lucky. This may seem grand but it is not grand in the real world where 50% of the country's young people are unemployed and the unemployment figure is being kept at an artificial level through a greater number of retirements and emigration by young people. Someone needs to get serious about this issue. Other countries are as serious about their economies as we are about our economy.

On the question of whether no one is in charge, that is simply not the case. The markets have been in charge for some time. Nobody was prepared for this because everybody cheated when the euro was being created. We heard about the independence of the European Central Bank. That was what the Germans, who were giving up the Deutsche mark, wanted at the time and that was what they got. It was left open and, as the market system developed, it has hijacked our systems. This is what we are looking at today and it is the reason I am saying we do not have power. The only thing we can have is some sort of moral power, but we do not have any reason to claim that. We must find and build on such a moral power.

The European Parliament works well. Members should watch the changes that take place in future because there will be a treaty change which will give rise to a new European Union. It will not be the experimental model we have had thus far but one that is fixed. We must be heavily involved in drawing it up.