Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

I begin by challenging the assumption in the motion that Ireland had until very recently full economic sovereignty and autonomy, and that sovereignty was recently taken from us through our participation in the troika arrangement.

Over time, we have traded elements of our national sovereignty in return for economic progress. In the 1950s, various Governments looked to deliver economic progress through greater exports, and different international agencies were formed to support that. Every Government since then has said that the way to deliver greater national prosperity is through greater integration with the global economy. Even before the current crisis, we were the second most globalised country in the entire world, through our participation in global capital flows and due to the size of the multinational community in Ireland. Over the last 18 to 24 months, despite the difficulty we have been going through, we have gone from being the second most globalised state in the world to being the most globalised.

Professor J.J. Lee, in Ireland 1912 -1985, Politics and Society, makes the point that countries do well when they counter their loss of influence at home with greater strategic planning in how they deal with the outside world. The huge mistake we made during the last ten years was in the quality of our strategic planning in dealing with the outside world and the global capital flows, to which Deputy White referred, and with creating employment. That strategic planning was lost. We are now paying a terrible price for that.

The answer is not to turn our back on forces with which we have been able to engage positively during our history. The answer is to reassess how we do it and ask how we can do it better now. Two elements of this are essential. First, we must get ourselves to the point where Irish public services are paid for by Irish taxpayers. The greatest thing we can do in restoring our sovereignty and improving where we are at present is to reduce our need to borrow from others. Second, we have a huge interest in the improved economic governance of Europe as opposed to the delivery of economic government in Europe. We would be in a better place if events outside our control, in countries outside our control, had not gone in the direction they did in the past 18 to 24 months. Putting in place mechanisms to ensure that bad decisions are not made, as opposed to taking control of those decisions, is not something we should be afraid of. It is something we should embrace.

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