Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Last week's meeting of the European Council was one of the most critical in the history of the European Union. This summit was charged with providing a final and decisive answer to a crisis that is hitting all 17 states in the euro and is a direct threat to the wider European and global economies. It was the fifth time this year that leaders met determined to draw a line under the crisis by acting decisively and in unity. They promised a firewall to contain the crisis and to do whatever it would take to return Europe to rising growth and employment.

For anybody who wants Europe to work, for anyone who believes that countries are stronger when they work together, and for anyone who recognises the great history of the Union, the outcome of the summit was close to a disaster. There is no secure firewall. The flaws in the euro have not been fixed. There is no plan for growth. To make things worse, these failures have been linked with a deeply damaging political split which developed in the name of an agenda that does absolutely nothing about the real causes of the crisis. We are now heading into a three-month period of discussions which is almost designed to destroy what confidence is left in the European Union and the euro. There has been no serious move away from the agenda that has comprehensively failed over the last year and a half. This agenda drove Ireland and Portugal out of the bond markets and has put other countries in great difficulty, and it may shortly involve the downgrading of the credit of every eurozone country.

The leaders of Europe handled this summit appallingly. They maximised division, minimised discussion and produced a set of agreements based on little more than hope that failed policies can be made to work if they are given one final push. The only thing left to cling to is the chance that there is still time left to do something before further - and this time irreparable - damage is done.

Anyone paying attention to events in recent days will have been repulsed by the spectacle of assorted euro-haters dancing with joy at the idea that the European Union is under threat. This is not just a British phenomenon; throughout the Union, there are reports of those who have fought the Union at every turn claiming that they are being proven right. Wherever anti-EU forces have any influence, they are trying to make a bad situation much worse. There are reports of the Dutch Government's majority being under threat. In the Czech Republic, the president's appointee in the national bank is working to veto the agreed funding. Elsewhere, anti-European Union forces are seeking to maximise the damage they can do.

It is one of the greatest failings of Europe's leaders that they are encouraging the idea that to be pro-European Union, one must support their agenda or be seen as a eurosceptic. This is dismissive and counter-productive. In fact, the people who are most concerned about the agreement - the people who are most angry with the leaders who put it together - are those who most want the Union to work. My party is proud to have led Ireland into the great programme of European integration. In every poll for every referendum, our supporters have been the most enthusiastic about the Union. Following the vision first outlined by Seán Lemass in the 1930s, we are a resolutely pro-European Union party. There is not now and there never will be any wavering on this point. Anyone who tries to read anything else into our comments during this crisis is wrong. We want Europe to be strong and successful. That is why we believe the agreement reached at this summit is both foolish and damaging.

We in no way object to the discussion on giving the Union more powers. What we object to is the failure to give the right powers. We also believe the Government has followed a flawed strategy. It has been incapable of escaping from its obsession with scoring political points at home and has therefore abandoned a major opportunity to shape events. It has also spent too much time on whether there will be a vote on the agreement and not enough on what will be in it.

Unfortunately, more and more people are asking whether the euro is worth saving. Equally unfortunately, they are getting only general rallying cries in response. The euro was a major experiment when it was launched, and its chief architect, Jacques Delors, has stated that problems in its construction are the direct cause of today's crisis. However, in spite of this, the evidence shows that the euro has enabled significant growth throughout the Union, which has been maintained even after the declines of the last few years. In Ireland, the story is even clearer. For example, a study released this week by researchers based at the ESRI and Trinity College concluded that the adoption of the euro has had a significant and positive impact on our exports, which has increased over time. It showed how it has provided boosts of between 30% and 60% in various markets.

Being part of a large currency has been of enormous benefit to us in attracting investment and giving companies a solid foundation on which to access and increase opportunities. The creation of a large number of jobs has been enabled by the euro. There is no doubt that if we were forced to have our own currency, there would be a further severe and long-term impact on both employment and living standards.

The euro has been good to Ireland. It is key to our return to growth, and we need to play our part in helping it to survive. Part of this is that we should be willing to speak out when the policies being pushed are wrong. Every piece of evidence shows that the introduction of stronger fiscal rules is a marginal part of the agenda to tackle the crisis. Ireland was fully compliant with both the existing and the proposed fiscal rules throughout the entire decade before the crisis. In contrast, Germany and France regularly broke the rules. Soon after his election, President Sarkozy even invited himself to a meeting of finance Ministers to announce that France intended to break them for a bit longer.

In his television broadcast, repeatedly in this House and in his contribution to last week's summit, the Taoiseach has steadily increased his support for the idea that stronger fiscal rules would have prevented the crisis and our bailout. He wrote to President Van Rompuy: "[T]he Irish people are paying the price now for the absence of such rules in the past". This is not only wrong, it directly undermines Ireland's negotiating position. It says to the leaders of Europe that everything is Ireland's fault and fails to make the increasingly undeniable point that Ireland required a bailout because of the lack of a lender of last resort and our willingness to take decisions in the interest of the whole of Europe. This last point is one that the Taoiseach began to make last week, but he undermined his own argument by insisting on domestic political point-scoring.

The Taoiseach is right to join everyone else in welcoming the removal of private sector burden sharing from the agenda of sovereign bailouts. Where he continues to be wrong is in his failure to explicitly point to how the raising of this issue last year directly and rapidly undermined Ireland's ability to borrow. That relates to the Deauville meeting with President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel.

As I said in March and in a number of debates since then, my party supports the idea of incorporating fiscal rules into legislation. This is not question of whether there should be such rules but of how they should be set. I find it no less than incredible that the Taoiseach agreed new rules last week without having access to a single study on their possible impact. I asked this question of the Taoiseach yesterday, and it was clear that there was no such study.

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