Mr. Brian Hayes:

I am glad to hear that.

What are the big issues? We are slowly putting in place the pillar blocks for banking union. We need to get on to the jobs, investment and growth agenda. President Juncker has proposed a radical plan where €300 billion of new funding will be put into infrastructural projects in the next three years. I understand the Irish Government needs to submit its proposals to the EIB by the end of October. We should have a big discussion on that. I want to see viable proposals because the EIB, at one level, and President Juncker, at another level, are adamant that we now need to get on to the investment agenda to deal with the unacceptable level of unemployment that exists across the Union.

In regard to capital markets, 80% of funding in Europe is by way of ordinary banks. We need to move to a system where many public infrastructural projects are funded by PPPs and the private sector, a bit like in America. To do that, we need a functioning capital market system, or non-bank lending as it is called. That will be a crucial task over the mandate of this Parliament.

We also need to have a single energy market, and not just because of energy dependency from eastern to western Europe and the issues in Ukraine. We need to put the infrastructure in place; President Juncker has spoken about that.

We need to complete structural reform. Some 90% of the growth in the world in the next five years will not be in Europe. Europe is getting old, flabby and uncompetitive and we must start to provoke the innovation agenda, get research back into our industries, recreate manufacturing and look at ways to do things a bit better and at how do we get more money into SMEs. That is the real task Europe faces and that is why we must complete the structural reform agenda to ensure we come back strong.