Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

He is a very good analyst on economic affairs and it is a pity he was not listened to more often. He wrote about the role of government. When an economy over-heats, one expects to see interest rates rising, to see regulation, a calming down and some moderation and some intervention. In a recession one expects to see a government intervening to stimulate the economy to see interest rates falling and banks being encouraged to get the economy moving again. Everything that has been done at European level in recent years has been pro-cyclical, which is crazy. How can an economy grow if the banks are not able to lend and when heavily indebted areas face rising interest rates? How can an economy grow by taking away resources from those whose spending is essential to the economy? It is absolutely bonkers. Economists on both the left and the right of the equation agree on this. There has been a complete failure of economic intervention at European level.

In Ireland, regulation failed. Our Central Bank and the Financial Regulator and the Department of Finance and our Government, failed. It was a failure not just by Ireland but also at European level but I ask where has been the collective sharing of responsibility. The leaders of Europe say there has to be burden-sharing in Greece but, incredibly, we have to pay the unsecured bondholders. These are not the people who bought in the primary bond markets rather these are the people who bought in the secondary markets. We have to pay them over €1.2 billion in January and further hundreds of millions of euro later next year.

The Taoiseach and his Ministers know this is bonkers. If the Taoiseach was having a private pint with his friends he would say it was wrong and it is bonkers yet we sit here and read out these speeches. As my party leader pointed out, the speechwriters have written that this is a great deal but it is madness. We say that Herman Van Rompuy is doing a great job but his strings are being pulled by the Franco-German axis with regard to his response to his crisis. Our people are having to endure sustained periods of austerity, they have to watch the return of the blight of emigration to our island and also deal with unemployment. Now, they must watch the news about the eurozone crisis and the continued failure to deal with it by the European Union.

The European banking authority stress-tested 24 banks last July and it was all supposed to have been sorted out but now, Dexia is collapsing. We do not have full, open accountability within the European banking system. For example, we do not have the unleashing of the significant potential of the European Investment Bank which has twice the capacity of the World Bank to get the Irish economy moving. At what point do we in Ireland speak out and say that what is happening is fundamentally wrong?

I ask the Taoiseach if he is going to stand at the podium on the centenary of the 1916 Rising and be mindful of all that is in the Proclamation and of the vision of the men and women of that period, knowing that he has ceded more fiscal powers to that failed process and entity. He inherited the loss of economic sovereignty but he did not fight like a lion to get it back again and he actually ceded more. He allowed people to use this crisis to further their objectives of increased integration. There is no point in the Irish people voting in the general election that may well be held in 2016. In a functioning democracy, political parties argue about whether public services are to be strengthened or weakened, whether privatisation of public services is to be continued. These are the usual debates. However, the people will have a choice which will be pointless because those decisions will have been made already. The capacity to stimulate the economy, the capacity to be brave, to be imaginative, to be creative, will all have been strangled. This House will become a super-council. This is not the legacy we want on the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising.

I appeal to the Taoiseach. He knows we are right and that at some point, somebody has to make a stand against this madness. Somebody has to say there is a five hundred pound gorilla in this room and I am no longer going to ignore it; I will say it out loud and I will call it. I urge the Taoiseach to find his roots. When he was elected to this House back in the mid-1970s as a bright young man and with all his hopes and ambitions I am sure he never dreamed that he might be the Taoiseach who gave away our economic sovereignty and betrayed the legacy of 1916. That is the Taoiseach's choice and his legacy. The next two years will tell their own story.

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