Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Higgins for that long dissertation and preamble. He speaks in respect of middle and low-income workers. Because the Government has a concern about this and every other sector of society, it entered serious negotiations with the troika to make changes to the original memorandum of understanding. This is the reason, based on those discussions, that results were achieved in making no change to income tax in the recent budget. This allowed people to look at their pay cheque in January and to see no change in income tax from the position that obtained in December. This is the reason, as I told Deputy Boyd Barrett, the Government made changes to the universal social charge that removed 330,000 people from its scope. These changes and the reversal of the cut in the minimum wage meant that 36,000 people were restored in this regard. In addition, the figure of €17 billion over the lifetime of the Government for a capital programme to which I already have referred speaks for itself. Moreover, 23,000 people are employed in community employment schemes, as well as another 5,000 people between the JobBridge and Tús programmes. Many of those people now are being offered full-time employment because of their performance on training schemes and on temporary work with specialist firms.

Consequently, the emphasis of the Government at present is to deal with the requirement to be able to ease the burden of repayment, based on the excessive amounts borrowed, to recapitalise the banks in the first place. Ireland has not sought a write-down and in that context, the discussions now are at a point at which the troika itself put forward the proposition that a paper should be prepared based on the unique and onerous challenge that Ireland faces in this regard. When that paper is produced and finalised, it will have the status of a troika presentation to our colleagues around the table.

The Deputy spoke of the issue of a referendum. While I believe I dealt with this matter before the Deputy entered the Chamber, perhaps he was present for some of the time. The democracy in which Members work means the Attorney General of the day makes his or her view known formally and legally when requested to so do by the Government. However, the Deputy specifically referred to the question of the transfer of powers from the European Court of Justice to an intergovernmental treaty. The discussions taking place yesterday were to the effect that while one might prefer to be able to deal with that element of the discussions by way of secondary legislation, which would as a consequence be rooted in the European Union treaties - I understand that progress has been made in that regard, in that the European Court of Justice would be the determining body of a country having strayed outside the conditions of the intergovernmental treaty - it would be the European Commission that would be the sanctioning entity which is directly rooted in the EU treaties as a fundamentally important European Union institution. Nobody in the Oireachtas is in a position to give the Deputy a definitive answer today as to whether a referendum will be required in the context of non-compliance with Bunreacht na hÉireann. It will only be on Monday next, when the text of the intergovernmental agreement, from a legal perspective, has been presented and signed off on, that the Attorney General will be asked to provide her formal legal advice. That is the position on the Deputy's specific comment about the European Court of Justice.

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