John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I fully welcome the introduction of this Bill as a very positive step towards improving the structures of the International Monetary Fund. I remember in secondary school - which was not all that long ago - reading about the Bretton Woods agreement. Thanks to the Oireachtas Library and Information Service I have had the chance to read some more about the agreement in recent days in preparation for speaking in the Chamber.

The Bretton Woods agreement was established at the end of the Second World War, following a conference in New Hampshire in the United States at which 44 allied countries came together to examine the crisis that emerged in Europe prior to that war and at what emerged in the United States in the context of the Great Depression. They wanted to look at the difficulties that arose during that conflict and to try to plan an economic future for the world in the post-war situation.

At the time it was decided that all international currencies would be more or less linked to the dollar which, in turn, would be linked to the gold standard. That situation survived until 1971 or 1972, when the link between the gold standard and the dollar was broken. The Bretton Woods agreement also established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the latter focusing primarily on investing in underdeveloped countries throughout the world while the function of the IMF was to ensure the operation of the global economy into the future. By and large, that criterion, the challenge established at the end of the Second World War, has been fulfilled.

This Bill goes some of the way towards ensuring that the IMF is more representative of the world as it now stands, and of the new strengths of economies and societies across that world. It also ensures a fully democratic election of the people who run the IMF into the future. I do not understand how anybody could do other than support that.

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