Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on something as important as the motion, which I welcome. I concur with Deputy Alex White that it is not an unusual motion from the Technical Group. It is negative, all doom and gloom. The world is going to fall in on top of us and the Taoiseach should make sure that does not happen. Needless to say, the motion is not ground-breaking.

Deputy Billy Kelleher has made a ground-breaking acknowledgement that we are where we are thanks to a lack of oversight. It is nice to hear a representative of the Fianna Fáil Party finally acknowledge that it did play a huge part in the destruction of the economy.

There is no doubt from a European point of view that serious lessons must be learned. The motion the Technical Group has put before the House indicates that we have learned nothing. It suggests it is business as usual and that we will continue to pretend everything is fine, that we will not change anything and that we will prepare for the next bubble that will blow up in our faces, leaving us all with another massive problem to try to address. We can either take that route or do what the Government, led by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, is doing, namely, looking at alternatives to ensure the European Union works for citizens and that it is not narrowly focused, as Deputy Alex White indicated.

There is a temptation to take the Sinn Féin line on this issue. There is a growing fear that the Sinn Féin line might be beginning to resonate in some places. It is that there is an alternative; that there is another type of European Union. Sinn Féin is dead right; there is another type, the Europe prior to the Treaty of Rome-----

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