Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

This is not a question but it is the most serious item I could raise here today. At yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on European Affairs we had the Departments of the Taoiseach, Finance and Enterprise, Trade and Employment represented. They came to brief us on the submission being made by the Government by the end of this month, not on the Lisbon treaty but on the Lisbon Agenda on growth and employment. It was a work of fiction. It did not reflect anything that is happening. It must have been written 12 months ago. It will be very serious if that 77 or 78 page report which has to go to the European Union to give a picture of where we stand for the years 2008 to 2010 is submitted, unless it is significantly amended.

The document gives the impression that everything is rosy in the garden in Ireland. It was written before the budget and the recent major financial turmoil. There are only one or two paragraphs in it that relate to the budget.

At the European Council a major decision was made to inject €30 billion into small and medium enterprises to kick start employment and growth in EU member states. That fact is not referred to at all in the major submission that has been drafted and which will be sent to the European Union. If we are going to generate employment, surely we should be examining mechanisms to draw down some of the very substantial amount of money that is now available, particularly in the context of the current credit crunch. The Taoiseach should read the submission before it is sent to see if he is happy with it.

Almost everything that needs to be said has been said about the Lisbon treaty. The Taoiseach did not get as hard a time on the issue as many of us had expected he would. The treaty will be centre stage again in December. I wish to warn the Taoiseach that the sub-committee that has been established is charged with examining the challenges facing Ireland and Ireland's future in the European Union; it is not a sub-committee to determine the way forward for Ireland, post-Lisbon, or how we find a solution for the Lisbon treaty, which is a much more difficult matter. I urge the Taoiseach not to expect that all of the solutions will come from the sub-committee. He will have to devise his own roadmap for the way forward in December, at which time the pressure will definitely be on him. It is very difficult to see what progress can be made prior to the local and European elections next summer and how the situation can be addressed, not to mention putting concrete proposals on the table in December. I hope that plan A is not the sub-committee but that other activities are being engaged in by the Taoiseach and others.

The issues of energy and climate change have been stressed. These are two of the most serious issues to which we have no answer at present. Each member state seems to be engaged in an individual response to the problems of energy supply. The Germans, for example, are doing one thing with a pipeline, while the Balkan States are doing another. The only way we can effectively deal with the question of security of energy supply is through a co-ordinated, concerted approach at EU level. An EU-Russian summit is scheduled for 14 November to discuss Georgia. At issue is not just the conflict in Georgia, but the fact that gas pipelines traverse that country. Perhaps that summit could be expanded because the one thing the European Union has not been doing is presenting a united front with regard to energy supply and security. In fact, it has become even looser since the Georgian conflict erupted. I ask that something be done in this regard at EU level.

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