Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It is most important that we make the comparisons. We are part of the European Union, which is an entity in itself. We have access to the Single Market and the associated benefits, negatives and positives. We also have the possible threat of protectionism, which is emerging globally at present. The Chairman is aware, from past experience, that smaller countries and economic entities always suffer most in a protectionist situation. We were in that situation ourselves for years.

Professor Barrett has prompted another interesting question in respect of the comment on Europeans having gone the austerity route as opposed to another route. I am keen to know more about that, because I have had this debate with many people during the past eight or nine years. I visited certain people in Brussels along with a number of others. We were told where we had gone wrong. According to them, no other country went wrong except for Ireland. The Stability and Growth Pact was ignored by several countries. This allowed the economies of certain countries to degenerate as opposed to deteriorate – for the want of a better description – rapidly over a period.

I have debated this question with Professor Barrett on air in the past. Ultimately, the question was whether adopting so-called austerity was the correct option. I believe we did not have austerity; we had the need to live within our means. The previous Government adopted policies. It had to adopt those policies, otherwise Ireland's economy would have imploded and we would have nothing - no pension and no social welfare payments or only 25% of them because that is all we would have been in a position to afford. The reality needs to dawn on us at some point. We need to quit harking back to fantasy land. We do not live in fantasy land. We live in the real world and we should tell our people that. As politicians, we do our best to do that all the time.

I wish to make one final point. Incidentally, the United States went the right way. We are not too sure about that, so perhaps we will wait and see. I would prefer to wait and see where all the Chinese bondholders have gone, what they have done in the meantime, when they will call in those bonds and so on. In any event, issues arise in this regard that we need to look at carefully. We need to look at the necessity for us to compete with our EU colleagues on a reasonably level playing pitch. That is important.