Dr. Seán Healy:

I am grateful for the question. When we come here, we get five or ten minutes and can only say so much in that time. If I had a little extra time, I would certainly have stressed the importance of the European Union. Historically, it was set up in a Continent that had seen the outbreak of two world wars within its boundaries. When the beginnings of the Union and the Common Market were set up in 1957, it was very clear what the whole thing was to be about, which was building a better future for everybody on the Continent and interconnecting their economies and so on so that there would be no more war. That worked fine. When the growth went, however, there was a global push to make more money. We had to do other things. We saw the emergence of neoliberalism as a philosophy in economics, which was pushed more and more by various people, including some very prominent leaders, even within the European Union.

The core issue is that since the presidency of Jacques Delors in the Commission, we have not had a President of the Commission who was really serious about balancing the economic and the social. Jacques Delors was serious about it and, because of that, we had a very good decade under his presidency. Many social programmes were developed, some of which are still in place and some of which were very good. They were put in place because he was crystal clear about the need at a European level to balance the economic and the social.

My contention is that we have lost our compass and increasingly taken a view that we need to get the economy right and everything else will follow. When the economy was booming, the key to getting everybody having a good life was seen as having a bigger and bigger economy. There was a belief in growth at all costs no matter what. It was totally insufficient. What was the economic growth for? The economy is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. When we forget about that and focus only on growing the means without looking at why we are doing so, we are heading into trouble. That is what happened. When the crash came, people reverted.

My understanding is that those bank loans Deputy Mattie McGrath was talking about were not insured in that way. However, I do not have any inside knowledge of that. Overall, there was a very strong political drive to find solutions. We came up with the Stability and Growth Pact. We had a referendum on bringing all those controls into place. I would argue very strongly that this was a political solution to an economic problem and that there is no justification for it in economics. It certainly will not produce a fair and balanced future in the European Union. We in Ireland are going to see the difficulties in the next few years. Money will be available but we will face serious constraints in terms of being allowed to invest that money to deal with our infrastructure shortages and service provision problems.

The member's experience is not exactly the same as mine but I have had several similar ones. In the past decade, we have seen the emergence of what is now known as the precariat, people with zero-hour or part-time jobs who are in very insecure employment on a long-term basis. It is not just when they are students or for the first year or two of their employment life, but across their lives. As a result, we have to rethink at a European and national level how we can secure a good future for every citizen of the Union when the traditional approach is no longer viable. Although we have had huge growth in the economy, neither the average income nor the median income has grown. As a result, there has been a widening of the gap, which is a very serious problem. If we do not deal with it, it will come home to roost eventually in the kind of realities the Chairman is talking about.