Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Last week, in advance of the European Council meeting in Brussels, the Taoiseach wrote to Council President Herman Van Rompuy. He told him: "Ireland has acted in the interests of the euro area by not imposing losses on unsubordinated bank bondholders and as a result has paid an extraordinary high price to protect the wider European banking system from contagion." He went on to say that he would raise this matter with colleagues during the course of the summit.

Yesterday, during his briefing for Opposition leaders, he made it clear to me that he did not formally raise the issue of the extraordinary cost to Irish citizens of his policy and that of the previous Government of bailing out the banks. He did say he raised the need to "re-engineer our debt burden" with other leaders but that the summit was the wrong meeting to put forward Irish interests. He said there would have been no tolerance of any government raising its own specific issues. He said the focus was on the euro crisis.

However, when I raised this issue with him yesterday during Leaders' Questions, he claimed I was misrepresenting him. I was not misrepresenting him. I repeated accurately what he told me. Maybe he misunderstood my question and gave me the wrong answer, but I did not misrepresent him. I will not misrepresent him or anyone else. I do not do business like that. Why would I? There is no point. I reject the assertion that I put words in his mouth.

In his letter he said his intention was to seek political support "from colleagues around the Council table for a process which would ensure that Ireland continues to make progress towards debt sustainability and an early return to the markets". Did the 27 members of the Council discuss his appeal? If so, what was the response? What commitments did he secure from his colleagues? If the content of the summit statement released last Friday is anything to go by, it is clear, as it is in the Taoiseach's statement today, that the issue of Ireland's debt burden and the crippling austerity being imposed on Irish people to service this burden was not raised properly by him nor were any commitments secured.

The deal struck by 26 EU leaders on Friday, 9 December, in Brussels will not solve the eurozone crisis. Who knows what will happen, but in my opinion it will make matters worse. The agreement is not a fiscal compact. It is an austerity compact. It seeks to impose right-wing austerity policies in perpetuity. The difficulty for all of us is that the Taoiseach agrees with this. The agreement was not imposed on him and he was not coerced or cajoled into it. It reflects his policies and political stance as leader of the Fine Gael Party and vice president of the EPP. It also reflects the position of the Labour Party.

Figures produced by the Central Statistics Office yesterday showed that the long-term unemployment rate has increased from 6.5% to 8.4% over the year and that long-term unemployment accounted for more than 56% of unemployment in the third quarter. We have also discussed how the most vulnerable people are affected by these policies. Austerity does not work, except for the elites. The policy of austerity in perpetuity, which will be enshrined in law, is bad for Irish citizens and citizens across the EU.

Seeking to emasculate our economies as part of the reinvention of capitalism is bad enough, but the agreement last Friday also seeks to undermine member states's democracy. Additional powers are to be given to the European Court of Justice and the European Commission to police the new 0.5% deficit ceiling and the existing provisions of the Stability and Growth Pact. These powers will enable the court to adjudicate when member states are in breach of the new austerity rule. This is a very significant development, the implications of which are as yet very unclear. The Taoiseach should have taken the opportunity today to clarify and set out his view on its implications.

Section 4 deals with the new austerity rule and states: "Such a rule will be introduced in member states' national legal systems at constitutional or equivalent level." The Taoiseach has agreed that the new austerity rule will be introduced into our Constitution and national legal system. For the information of the Taoiseach, there is no equivalent level with our Constitution. We are a State with a written constitution, which happens to be a good thing. Other states do not have written constitutions and the rule will be introduced at equivalent level to our constitutional position.

In his statement today, the Taoiseach said he is examining how this requirement dovetails with the fiscal responsibility Bill which is now being prepared. That baffles me. I asked the question yesterday and the Taoiseach responded in the same way. Did he not figure this out before he agreed to the deal? Did he not know what it involved? Is he now saying that primary legislation may have equivalent status to constitutional law? As I understand it, the difference is very straightforward; this Parliament can change law, but only the citizens can change the Constitution. As such, the position the Taoiseach has put forward is absolutely wrong.

We are told that the so-called golden rule - there is always a good buzzword to describe something which is bad for people - will empower the Commission to impose specific fiscal and budgetary policies on democratically elected Governments. The people elect a Government and that Government sets out its policies and seeks to implement them. The Taoiseach has railed against the Fianna Fáil Party and the Green Party for giving away our sovereignty, yet he now proposes to cede a large portion of that sovereignty in perpetuity. Moreover, he proposes to do so through the backdoor, by way of legislation. The transferring of powers from democratically elected politicians and member states to unelected judges and civil servants in Luxembourg and Brussels takes real power away from citizens. It is anti-republican and anti-democratic. The bottom line is that the agreement reached last Friday in Brussels will significantly reduce the ability of any future Government to implement policies under its own steam. Elections will become effectively meaningless and pointless because anything the people vote for will, under this new rule, have to be run past people in other states over whose election we have no control. It is totally undemocratic.

None of this will be any surprise to the Taoiseach. He was not bounced or shoved into this agreement. In his speeches in this House before and after previous summits, he stated his support for such developments. In a debate just before the summit he said, "Ireland supports the creation of stronger economic governance throughout Europe and especially throughout the eurozone". On that occasion he talked about the bilateral meetings conducted by the President of the European Council, Mr. Van Rompuy, and indicated that senior Irish officials were engaging in those meetings. In all such negotiations, a great deal of the spadework is done in advance and we know the direction in which it is going. With that knowledge, the Taoiseach can use his influence to steer matters in a certain direction. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he was going in the same direction as the French and German Governments and some of the other larger states. The reality is that he was happy to give away these fiscal powers even before he went to the summit. Now he is examining whether the various provisions, particularly those relating to clause 4, can be brought in through some avenue other than a referendum.

There is an economic alternative to what is proposed in this agreement. It is encompassed in the principle upon which the Labour Party stood in the last election, as summed up in the famous phrase "Frankfurt's way or Labour's way". It is about decency and fairness. It is about stimulating the economy, encouraging growth, getting people back to work and protecting the most vulnerable of our citizens. It is about having core values which seek to have the economy working in protection of social guarantees for citizens in respect of public services, including health, access to education and the right to a home and a good environment. That is the alternative to what is currently proposed.

While the Taoiseach has repeatedly said this is a political agreement, the last paragraph clearly states that the objective is to make a treaty. There is still space for the Taoiseach to reflect on the issues raised here, to review his support for what is a bad deal and to return to our partners in the EU on that basis. My party cannot and will not support the transfer of more powers from the Oireachtas to Brussels. Nor will we support the imposition of a draconian 0.5% deficit ceiling by way either of primary legislation or a constitutional amendment. The Taoiseach can say what he wants about my party, but he cannot deny we have been consistent on these issues from the very first referendum, when I was a very young man, in 1972 or 1973. The Sinn Féin position, supported at that time by others who are now in government, has been consistent at every single referendum in pointing out the undemocratic nature of the European system. We are not against the European Union; rather, we want a different type of union which values citizens, is based on equality and sees all states as equals.

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