Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

For citizens, terms such as "fiscal discipline" often translate into real life as cutbacks, hardship and, as my colleague Deputy Mac Lochlainn stated, struggling to meet basic household bills.

The proposed strategy poses a further dilemma at EU level. How can the reputation of a financial area be made more solid by rewarding bank failure and not bank success? How can we trust the EU to police national budgets and to ensure economic growth and recovery while it is bailing out European banks at the expense of the welfare of European citizens for generations to come? How is it that the European Commission's deliberations on, for example, burden sharing are an exercise in futuring? Why has it adopted this "not yet" policy? Not only will the policy not work, it could bring about an economic apocalypse in so-called peripheral countries like Greece and Ireland. How can the term "economic governance reform" be used at European level to sugar coat a vicious agenda of shrinking the public sector, slashing the welfare state and protecting bondholders? I will conclude, so I ask the Acting Chairman to indulge me.

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