Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)

Things are reaching crisis point in Europe and are not all well. The chances of Europe being saved this week are pretty slim but it will probably not be saved this week, this month or next year. It will be an ongoing process. Ms Merkel seems to have different ideas to everyone else, mainly because Germany is in a better state than Europe as a whole. She is in a difficult place with her own people and it is hard for her to be a good German and a good European at the moment. They are all hell bent on trying to get the market on side. Doing this will be difficult unless they give the markets everything they want and the notion that another patch-up job, half Ms Merkel and half Mr. Sarkozy, will fix things means that it will be a compromise. Not many of us believe there will be a solution from this. The markets are unlikely to be completely happy until the ECB becomes a lender of last resort, eurobonds can be issued, which may not be enough to please the markets, or the ECB starts printing money. If I had to bet on it, I think the ECB will eventually print money because there is not another way out of it. I do not think Greece will go back to the markets before 2020 and Ireland will not go back in 2013 or 2014. Our debts are too great and unless Europe is prepared to deal with its impossible debt problems in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy, I do not see how it will work out. The figures do not stack up anymore.

Next year, Italy must raise €250 billion to re-finance expiring bond debts. Will the markets buy bonds and at what price? It will not be easy and unless there is a whole change of approach from Europe, either by using the ECB as a lender of last resort or by printing money, I do not see the problem being solved. The notion of fiscal union arose at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs and I asked the Minister of State, Deputy Creighton, whether she agreed that Ms Merkel was more interested in fiscal union than fiscal discipline at this stage. The Minister of State threw cold water on the idea and said that Ms Merkel was not remotely interested in fiscal union. I beg to differ and if the Germans are to fund the problems of Europe, we must play the game their way. That involves a huge loss of democracy for Ireland. Who will oversee this process if we introduce new rules to oversee how we carry out our financial business in Ireland, Italy or Spain? Who will decide that we are behaving well? Will these be elected people or will it be the European Commission? Will the European Commission become electable? No one wants to see the collapse of the euro, which would not be good for any of us, but neither do we want this country run from Brussels and Frankfurt. This is not what the Irish people want. The Irish people want Ireland run from this Parliament. While Irish people may be content to have European influence and direction, they do not want complete control yet that is what is being threatened. It will not be called fiscal union because there are so many different names one can call something and so many different ways around things. In the end, it will amount to the same thing and it is intolerable for Ireland to go down this road.

The current austerity measures are the opposite of Keynesian policy and Germany wants to inflict them on everyone else so that we meet some of the rules they would like us to meet and so that Europe functions in a manner pleasing to them. I find these rules too draconian and I do not see austerity bringing growth. In his state of the nation address on Sunday night, I could not count the number of times the Taoiseach referred to jobs but I do not believe the budget has created a climate that will create jobs. Austerity cannot do that. So many world economists disagree completely with how Europe is dealing with this and I think we must do a U-turn at some stage. If we want growth and jobs, there must be investment. It is not rocket science. Austerity here may be good for Germany but it is not good for us and if austerity does not bring growth and jobs over the coming years but helps Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria to grow, it will widen the gap and worsen the political problem. The economic thing goes down the Swanee because there are two different groups and the elite group is racing too far ahead of the rest of us. They undermine any chance of a political consensus where we live and work at the same table. This is not working and I plead with the Government not to take the running of Ireland out of this House.

See this speech in context