Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

It is a great pity the Government has resolved to proceed. Clearly, the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, then chairman on the all-party constitutional committee, counts for nothing. For seven years the Government has paid lip service to the wisdom on whether we should intrude in the matter of private property as it relates to building land. After his first five years in office, the Taoiseach decided to side-track the issue to a committee of the House where it has remained for two and a half years. While the price of houses is rocketing, it is not an issue of great speed seven years on. Suddenly, the issue of people wealthy enough to pay for tickets to fly into Dublin Airport and leave with an Irish passport at, I am told in the Coombe hospital, a rate of 200 per annum is one of great speed. We must deal with it in the context of an election when we and the Taoiseach know the implications. He was forced to condemn the activities of some of his backbenchers during the previous general election campaign.

On the summit itself, there is little in the official communiqué on the outcome in respect of the constitution. There is, however, a somewhat more useful, although still only indicative, Presidency note of 24 March which was issued as a separate press release. That is, perhaps, understandable given that the Intergovernmental Conference must now return to business and that, traditionally, the main purpose of the spring Council is to discuss the economic and social programme known as the Lisbon agenda. I do not wildly disagree with the remarks Deputy John Bruton has just made on the matter. I understand that, despite the commitment that the Lisbon agenda and economic issues would be the focus of the spring summit, less than three of approximately seven hours were devoted to them. Most of the conclusions were written in advance. Like Deputy John Bruton, I query the wisdom and merit of that.

On the subject of Lisbon, last weekend's communiqué had a somewhat Mylesian touch which was perhaps appropriate given the Irish Presidency. What is the message of the European Council? "It is one of determination and confidence". What are the challenges ahead? They are "formidable". What does Europe have? "The will and capacity". To do what? "Achieve its economic potential". As Deputy John Bruton said, there is nothing particularly imaginative or inspiring about those words. For those who need reminding, there is little prospect of achieving the targets set in the Lisbon agenda. That is official, by which I mean it is the reckoning of Mr. Wim Kok, the former Dutch prime minister who was asked to examine progress. As I remarked in the House in January after the previous Council, Mr. Kok has concluded in an exercise conducted for the Commission that the European Union is at risk of failing in its ambitious goal set at Lisbon in 2000. According to Mr. Kok, it is looking increasingly unlikely that the overarching goal for 2010 and the employment objectives will be attainable.

We read in last week's communiqué that Mr Kok is to be asked to head another expert group to again examine the Lisbon agenda, this time in the context of a mid-term review to be undertaken by the Commission next year. We are also apparently to have yet more fora for talk, the establishment of new bodies and national reform partnerships feeding into a European partnership for change. No one can object to the ambitions set out in the original Lisbon agenda. They include more growth, improved competitiveness, reduced unemployment, a cleaner environment and so on. These are, to use an Americanism, like motherhood and apple pie. While they are highly laudable, one wonders, given the differences in the politics of member states and governments, the diversity of national and regional economies and the complex nature of the union, particularly post-enlargement, if the Lisbon agenda is really anything other than Euro rhetoric.

There is a little more to it than that. The occasions of the Council and the communiqué have been used again to beat what is by now the rather tired old drum of commitment to the so-called Stability and Growth Pact. The pact has served its time. For France and Germany it is a millstone simply to be ignored. It is fundamentally based on the unproven economics of the so-called non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or NAIRU. It is also based on the anti-political theory that central bankers know best when it comes to the economy. It is corrupting of political morality, ignored by member states, the subject of an appeal by the Commission to the Court of Justice, which should never have happened, and used by governments such as ours to synchronise political and business cycles in the interest of maintaining power.

Despite all this, the communiqué refers to the maintenance by member states of sound budgetary positions in line with the Stability and Growth Pact. This is the stuff of Alice in Wonderland and conducive of public cynicism to the extent that communiqués are ever read, heeded or noted by the public. Among the commitments signed up to by the Taoiseach is a commitment to social cohesion. The Taoiseach was able to sign up glibly to the contents of the communiqué on this commitment while, at home, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs made her savage 16 social welfare cuts and short-changed working widows. I provide the House with a small taste of the communiqué on the topic under discussion:

A high level of social cohesion is central to the Lisbon agenda. Strategies which make a decisive impact on social exclusion and on the eradication of poverty must be reinforced.

When he sits with his fellow prime ministers, that is what the Taoiseach signs up to. What happens at home, we know, is a different story.

On telecommunications, the Taoiseach signed up last weekend to a developmental broadband policy for Europe while, at home, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Dermot Ahern, continued to oversee a disaster on this front. Many tens of thousands of citizens and a great many businesses are unable to access broadband services over the telephone network as a result of the shambles which is the Eircom legacy. Ireland has some of the most impressive global links in the world. Despite its impressive national network of trunk lines, including thousands of kilometres of optical fibre, unbundling of the local loop has not taken place. Even if it had, the local loop is, in too many instances, simply not capable of carrying broadband services.

While the Taoiseach was able to sign up last weekend to fine talk on opportunities for women in the labour market, gender equality and more family friendly workplaces etc., Ireland lags far behind the best standards of Sweden and even of the more modest EU average in this regard. Ireland lags far behind on these issues, and it is the Government's policy that has secured this regardless of the rhetoric, policies and ambitions of Europe. The Government has not invested in child care or pre-school services and appears to have no intention of doing so. It has overseen an inflation in housing prices that is anti-family in its impact. In many cases this has forced both parents into full-time work and long-distance commuting to service the mortgage on inflated house prices. This is one area where there has been an enormous amount of rhetoric from the Government. The Taoiseach has called for reform as if he were on this side of the House. There has been none of the action one could expect from a Government with a substantial working majority. One has to wonder if the subject of house prices is always to be determined by the views of those who contribute to the coffers of Fianna Fáil, rather than by the common good.

The spring summit represented work in progress. A huge amount remains to be done if the IGC is to be completed successfully. It will require vision and will, not just on the part of the Presidency, but on the part of all the members and accession countries. By the time of the next summit, the accession of the ten will have taken place and Ireland will have had public celebrations to mark this.

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