Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank my colleagues for their contributions. Deputy Kyne suggested an interesting research project that would ask people what they think of when they think about Europe. The research with which I am familiar includes the Eurobarometer polls conducted across Europe. These polls clearly demonstrate that people's faith in European institutions declined during the crisis. However, I would put this in context with two other findings from the same polls. First, faith and trust in European political institutions are higher in many cases than their faith in national political institutions, although faith in both sets of institutions has fallen dramatically. Second, when people were asked what they consider the right level of response to the current difficulties, many, and the majority in some cases, think the right level is higher than their own national governments.

Many people understand - as we do in this room - that just as the causes of our difficulties stretch beyond what happens within our borders, so too do the levels of an effective response, and they are greater than that which we can influence on our own.

The Deputy is correct to say that the levels of engagement and understanding shift across age groups. For many years the narrative of peace - Europe in the context of the end of the Second World War and the Cold War - kept Europe going. As that began to mean less to some people, a new narrative came along that drove policies such as the Single Market and the euro, which are ideas about a prosperous Europe with economic growth. That vision is now in the difficulty we are grappling with. We all need to work together to come up with new ideas that energise people again.

However, I am cautious about that approach. Deputy Eric Byrne mentioned the Baltic region. If a person spends any time there, they will find that a Europe that is peaceful and underpins security matters to them too. I am certainly aware that different ideas will mean different things to different countries at different times. I am attending the eastern partnership summit in a few months' time which will consider enlargement and our policy with countries to the east, where the idea of security matters deeply for reasons that the Deputy will be aware of.

That said, Ireland and other western European countries must rethink what Europe will mean as it moves forward. We spend so much time talking about having a banking or a fiscal union, but surely we need to spend as much time talking about the cultural values that underpin the European Union and what we have in common. I look forward to having the opportunity to talk about the simple idea that we will be able to face the challenges and realise the opportunities more successfully if we do it together. National governments are at their best in responding to questions such as how to grow a digital economy when doing it together. Finding ways to talk about working together and, more important, showing people that we are doing it is important in coming up with the next set of ideas that I hope will propel Europe forward.

Deputy Kyne mentioned specific ideas about the youth guarantee. Broadly speaking, while there is agreement at the top level about the quantity of money to be spent, we must reach agreement on the nuts and bolts in order that it can be done quickly. On the perceived losses referred to, we have not lost out on the quantity of funding in different funding negotiations. However, as Deputy Kyne is aware, the BMW region will be more developed than it is at the moment and that will impact on the funding levels that it can access. The Government was successful in securing a special allocation of €100 million for that region to allow us to do all we can to get ourselves well placed for funding negotiations and challenges we may face.

Deputy Eric Byrne concurred with me on some of the language difficulties we face. An analogy crossed my mind when I heard him speak. I have no clue about and I am useless at understanding how engines work. Whenever something breaks down in my car, I reach for the manual in the glove compartment with a sense of terror certain in the fact that I will not understand most of what it says. However, I know how to drive a car from A to B. That takes us back to the point made at the start of the meeting. Deputy Byrne is right. I know that he reads all the material and he grapples with the issues in the same way I do, but perhaps we need to spend as much time talking about the consequences of that work as we do about the work itself. The simple point Deputy Byrne made would appear to be essential in doing that, which is that as we begin to translate the agreements the Government has successfully achieved into work on the ground, we must acknowledge that in the work on the ground. In the past we acknowledged that the roads and all the other projects we benefited from were either co-funded or funded from Europe. We need to do the same for the European funded programmes we are talking about.

I note the point that was made about Northern Ireland. There is no need to say that Deputy Byrne and I feel the same way about the issue, which is that we need to ensure that the dark picture he painted does not happen. I want to praise the extraordinary speech our Tánaiste, the Labour Party leader, made recently at the British-Irish Association conference in Cambridge in which he talked about the need to be courageous in how we develop and advance reconciliation and understanding across communities in the North given such difficulties still exist. I hope to play what role I can in that work.

Deputy Eric Byrne also made an important point about the stability of the euro. When the promissory notes were a problem, that was all we talked about. Now that the Government has successfully dealt with the issue, however, no one talks about it. Bearing in mind the position we were in last summer, reasonable people such as ourselves worried that the euro would break up. Thank God such discussions have come to an end due to the interventions by Governor Draghi of the European Central Bank and those of our Government and other governments across Europe. As Deputy Byrne rightly pointed out, however, we took that for granted when it happened. We must acknowledge that lack of confidence in the euro so that we never take it for granted. We need to ensure we do not end up again in the dark days of the past. I remember when my constituents contacted me to ask where they should put their money.