Mr. Gay Mitchell, MEP:

We must remind ourselves that 60 million Europeans died in the first half of the previous century because we did not have an integrated, interdependent Europe. The biggest number of those died because of state socialism. That is one of the problems we have. If one asked the ten countries – soon to be 11 – that were dominated up until 1989 by the Soviet system whether they would like to go back to it, none of them would want to go back. Some of them have an income that is only a portion of ours. They want to grow with Europe. The European Union is a work in progress. It is imperfect, but the reality is that from Malta to Finland and from Ireland to Poland we have developed institutions and a new way of doing our business. Not only are we deepening and broadening the Union, we are also planning for our role in the world beyond the 2030s, as I mentioned previously, when Europe will be such a smaller place. I hope we will still produce something like 20% of the world’s GDP. We produce approximately 25% of it currently.

It has been a good exercise for this country in general. It has not been all positive but if we are to look to the future it is our role in Europe which is creating confidence. We have no doubt about where we stand in terms of the euro and our membership of the European Union. When people are looking at an English-speaking, common law system in which to invest, more and more they are picking Ireland. What we must do it build on that. This country needs two things; cashflow and confidence. As we get cashflow under control, confidence returns. As it does, we can get more in terms of income and we can undo some of the measures we have had to introduce but with which we must live currently.

People say austerity does not work. It is as if one plants a seed and one looks out in the morning and says that the rose bush has not grown. It does not work like that. We did it in the 1980s and we can do it again, only the next time because of the foundations we have built in recent times it will be more sustained. That is the good news. We must build on that good news. Any amount of state control of people’s lives will not change that. People do not want state control. Sometimes the best thing we can do as politicians is get out of the way and let people get on with their lives. We should only regulate properly the things we need to regulate and that are best regulated. We are a work in progress. We have a long way to go to have something with which we will all be satisfied but, by and large, if we stock-take we can see that much progress has been made and there is more ahead. We will see much more beneficial news for Ireland in the next three to four years.