Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

We revelled in it. It was on the basis of cheap energy resources which are no longer available as we face a peak in global oil production. Those structural problems define the storm we are facing. This helps us to acknowledge and be aware of the reality in order that we can plot a course and start to deliver solutions.

Let me outline a number of principles about the solutions we will deliver for the people. First, we must recognise that, as a small island nation with an open economy, the solution will require us to be enterprising. We will have to trade our way out of the problem. Government solutions will not carry the economy into a new era. It will have to be done on the back of inventive creative enterprise. For that reason we will have to be international in our outlook. It requires us to be active in international co-operation with our European partners and other countries in order that we will be well placed to allow our companies to trade in global markets. That is a crucial principle.

We will also have to have consensus on the path we take. I am old enough to remember the last difficult period in the early 1980s. Let us be honest and admit we spent seven years bickering about the solution that we all needed at that time——

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