Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for his observation and comments in support of the changes which the Irish Presidency is advocating on where in the hierarchy of deposits over €100,000 should fall. That is important. The second observation related to economic and monetary union, how it has developed and the over-enthusiastic confidence of some of its supporters. What we really have is a series of elements that Deputy Donnelly has described and which in their totality come close to a full fiscal union, because they are all rules about budgets. Rather than looking at the parts, if we look at them together they represent fiscal union. The difficulty I see is that we want to ensure that they are implemented as drafted. We had the Stability and Growth Pact previously. Then, when France and Germany exceeded the limits it was not applied. It seemed to amount to rules for small countries. If we want to go back to the start of the problems in Europe one could base them on the non-implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact in 2002 or 2003. This is one of the reasons that people like Wolfgang Schaeuble is so set on having things done by treaty. He wants to be able to have these matters enforceable in the European courts. He always says that he prefers a treaty, that is his position. That is why we had to go through the stability and growth treaty we put through in May 2011.

I agree with the observations of Deputy Donnelly. The Deputy referred to the need for flexibility. The way the conservation is developing at official level and at COREPER in advance of Tuesday’s meeting is that a group of countries are looking for more flexibility. They do not want the rules to be too tight. I am unsure what way that will fall on Tuesday.