Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

These questions deal with what happened at the recent European Council meeting on 10 May and the agenda for the next Council meeting in June. Anglo Irish Bank did not come up at either meeting. I was asked about the European Commission. The Deputy will be aware that the Van Rompuy task force held its first meeting last week. It will furnish a progress report on the basis of the meetings it intends to have between now and the June Council meeting, at which the matter will be discussed further. If the Deputy has examined what Commissioner Rehn said, he will know that the Commissioner was very complimentary about the route Ireland has taken since these difficulties first arose. Since then, we have received no formal or informal contact regarding our own plans. We have been complimented as an example to be followed by others who find themselves in our position. The question of accelerating fiscal consolidation according to national requirements has been particularly addressed to those who engaged in a fiscal stimulus in 2008. Those who had an exit strategy for 2011 have been asked to bring that forward. We did not have any room to manoeuvre in that respect. Therefore, that did not apply to us. The fiscal stimulus we have provided to the economy relates both to the level of spend engaged in but also the capital investment programme which remains approximately twice the European average.

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