Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Although this week's meeting of the European Council is the regularly scheduled June meeting, it is nevertheless still a crisis meeting. The Council has spoken at great length about the problems facing the European economy as they have deepened. While it has agreed on the need for comprehensive measures to tackle them, it has consistently failed to follow its words with credible action. The agenda for this summit is short and unambitious. All the major points were agreed at meetings of Finance and Foreign Affairs Ministers. In spite of the sheer range and scale of problems facing member states, the President of the Council announced yesterday that he intended to bring the summit to an end earlier than originally provided for.

If one examines the debates held before the last two summit meetings, one will almost be depressed by how little progress has been achieved. The great sense of urgency evident among countries at the start of the year has almost disappeared. Rather than a genuinely inclusive discussion among member states and institutions, we have a more narrow and exclusive debate. It seems policy is being developed through media briefings rather than in face-to-face discussions. The hands-off approach of the Taoiseach and other leaders in the last three months has failed. This summit should be used to say with absolute clarity that delay is no longer an option. If member states want to save the euro, contain the debt crisis and restore credibility to the European Union, they must stop talking and start acting. The first thing they should do is restore to the agenda the issue of the conditions applied to financial support for Ireland and others. The Finance Ministers have failed to handle this issue. It is time for the leaders to take it over.

A scheme to provide financial support for member states was agreed to in the first half of last year. Its objective was to help Greece and bring confidence to the market. That did not happen. By the time of the Irish deal in November, it was agreed that changes needed to be made. The Taoiseach and others like to talk about a lousy deal, but they know the truth is that the terms of the deal were fixed and not open to negotiation by anybody. This was recognised by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, in his opening remarks following the announcement of the deal. He rapidly changed his line when he saw that political gains were to be made by going on the attack. The need for new terms was negotiated in the following months, agreed to in February and formally ratified on 11 March. There was no equivocation. Every member state accepted that, as the communiqué states, terms "should be lowered to better take into account debt sustainability of the recipient countries". Final details relating to Ireland were postponed and handed to Finance Ministers purely in order that the bank stress test results could be published first. These stress tests turned out exactly as predicted and there was no reasonable basis for further delay.

I think even the Taoiseach would now accept that the self-aggrandising hyping of his brief chat with President Sarkozy on the margins of the meeting served no positive purpose.

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