Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Over the next few months there will be much debate on the ratification of the fiscal treaty to which the Taoiseach agreed on Monday. This is already shaping up to be a destructive process solely focused on the form of ratification rather than on the future of Europe and our role in it. For the first time since we applied to join the Union 50 years ago, we begin this debate without basic information being publicly available and without even the most elementary consensus between parties positive towards the European Union.

There is great danger that the approach to date and the pushing through of this treaty without any public engagement will do lasting damage to the standing of the Union in Ireland. For the sake of rushing through this treaty, we could damage the possibility of ever again winning support for an EU initiative. Given that this treaty commits us to a major new EU treaty in the next few years, this is an urgent concern.

It has been a bad year for Europe. Never before have its citizens been in such need of assistance and never before has the Union seemed less able to provide it. This is a defining moment in the Union's history. In the face of an unprecedented crisis, it must find new ways forward. Developments of long-standing policies simply are not good enough. The public demands answers and it our duty in this House to speak directly and constructively. We must speak hard truths, but must also show people that we are pushing credible solutions. The flaws in the way this treaty was negotiated, its contents and its ratification are so significant that they must be talked about. However, we cannot leave it at that; we need something more positive.

The issues discussed and agreed on Monday are at very best a small step. No matter how good the presentation of it is, this treaty and the measures agreed on Monday do not show the public that a solution is in hand on Europe's crisis. The measures are not radical enough and they do not tackle the urgent need to reform the ECB and expand European investment. While commentators talk about a theoretical possibility of new flexibility, in reality there is nothing more on the Union's agenda. The approach to EU issues in this House since the election has involved more heat than light. There is more time available for speeches, but there has been a refusal to provide information or respond to direct questions. We urgently need to change this. We need a genuine effort to find consensus among those who want the Union to work and we need this effort to start now.

Before addressing the real substance of the summit, I reiterate that the broad thrust of discussions on Monday about support for SMEs and redirecting funding must be welcomed. What is not welcome is the attempt to over-spin their significance. Completing the Single Market in areas such as services will help the broader European economy in the medium term. Hopefully, this in-principle agreement will become more definite in the near future. I hope too that the Taoiseach has the Labour Party on board in terms of services across the European Union, because it is not so long since it labelled the services directive as a Frankenstein.

As for the redirected Structural Funds, a similar reallocation has been a part of this funding for at least two decades. The reapportionment of funding not drawn-down is a basic principle of funding and has helped it to be highly effective in the past. This is a process from which Ireland has always benefited because our unfairly maligned public servants are among the most effective and efficient in Europe in implementing support programmes. What is really needed is new funding which can help countries currently unable to invest in job creation in spite of growing unemployment. If an initiative is not large enough to merit changing unemployment forecasts, it should not be presented as a major initiative. Over-claiming the significance of what was agreed on Monday will just feed disillusionment as people fail to see the impact of the measures in the near future.

Over the past twelve months, the European Council has held an unprecedented number of meetings. These meetings have mostly been held in the middle of a crisis and have always been followed by claims about decisive action and returning confidence. After all of the effort which has been put into these meetings, we are still faced with the fact that growth is falling, the cost of funding public services is rising and unemployment is at its highest ever level. Take, for example, the statements following any of last year's summits and compare them to what happened afterwards and it is clear that the European Council is failing. It is failing to restore confidence, it is failing to show leadership and, worst of all, it is failing to respect the spirit of solidarity on which the greatest international body in history was built. The reason it is failing is simple. This crisis involves radically new challenges, yet the Council has tried to tackle them with a set of incremental changes to existing policies. Every initiative has been delayed and others have been pushed in the face of evidence that they were not working. At Europe's hour of need, its leaders have been timid and obsessed with domestic political manoeuvring.

The economic impact of this has been very serious. Confidence and the ability of states to invest for recovery have been undermined. Just as serious, and with the potential to cause long-term problems, has been the damage to the standing of the Union with its citizens. 2011 saw the sustained destruction of public confidence in the EU. Since these issues began to be measured 35 years ago, there has never been such a dramatic and concentrated fall in sentiment towards the EU. Only 19% believe that the Union is heading in the right direction, while a majority say the opposite. This is not just about a eurosceptic fringe, but a factor throughout the Union, and most disturbingly it is now a factor in this country. Measured against figures taken just before this Government took up office, by last November the Irish public had moved suddenly to a negative view of Europe's direction. Sentiment declined by an unprecedented 38%. During three years of crisis this sentiment had remained strong, but it collapsed last year in the face of growing despair at the failures of Europe's leaders.

The consensus in this country has consistently been that people believe in the EU as a positive force. This has not always been the same as supporting EU treaties, but the reflexive anti-EU suspicions of its consistent opponents have never been a mainstream view of citizens. My fear is that if we do not quickly restore trust and confidence in the Union, then we run the risk of damaging its democratic legitimacy. The old arguments and cries to just rally to the cause have nothing to offer. In fact they are making matters worse, because they seek to deny legitimate concerns.

It is impossible to comment on the content of the agreed treaty without addressing the process by which it was developed and by which Ireland agreed to it. At European level, even the most basic groundwork has not been done to show the logic behind individual provisions of this treaty. Public debate was discouraged and a handful of bilateral summits were allowed to replace inclusive negotiations. The Taoiseach is not alone among his peers in having failed to undertake a detailed series of meetings with others. After three years of an economic crisis, a rising sovereign debt crisis made it clear that Europe needed new policies. It created bailout funds but struggled with the agenda of how to prevent the need for bailouts. Policies which forced Ireland and then Portugal out of the bond markets have been continued, with other countries surviving only due to indirect and probably unsustainable support.

The lack of stronger fiscal controls did not cause the crisis, but the narrow agenda of one country has made it the main focus of the proposed solution. Given that Ireland would have comfortably met every provision of this treaty in the decade before the crisis, no one has yet explained how the treaty would have prevented it.

Negotiations were not inclusive and they fostered acrimony and a lack of ownership of the outcome. It should be a concern to everyone that this is the first time in the Union's history that a treaty will not be signed by all of its members. At home this is the first time that no serious effort was made to seek input to Ireland's negotiating objectives for a treaty, and the first time when these objectives were not outlined in detail for the public. Long before December's text was negotiated, I wrote to the Taoiseach seeking engagement. He refused, saying that he saw no benefit from it. After he had already agreed the principles of the treaty, he called a meeting of all groups at which he gave no new information and he has failed to follow up a specific request from me for an analysis of the economic impact of what is proposed. In contrast, previous Governments of different make-ups were far more open. First of all, parties were given the basic respect of separate meetings when they were sought. Former Taoiseach John Bruton and former Tánaiste Dick Spring kept the Opposition fully informed in the Amsterdam treaty negotiations. For the constitutional treaty and Lisbon, the Opposition actually participated in the development of Ireland's negotiating position.

The Taoiseach will know that I was fully open with his spokespeople during the consultations I held while preparing the revised Lisbon proposal. They were given repeated briefings and the ability to make submissions which were incorporated into Government positions. Deputies Timmins and Costello made contributions to the final proposal and ensured that the mainstream pro-EU consensus survived. If the Taoiseach wants a constructive ratification debate he needs to begin respecting the fact that there are legitimate, pro-EU reasons for being concerned about this treaty.

We said last year, before any other party, that a core principle needed to be followed for the ratification of this treaty. If it involves any significant change then the people should be consulted. It has been clear for a long time that the Government wanted to avoid a referendum at all costs and Ministers have briefed extensively that they expect to be told that a referendum is not required. Today's newspapers reveal that the Taoiseach's claim to have no concern about holding a referendum is nonsense. At all stages of the negotiating process, the avoidance of a public vote was the primary objective for the Government.

The Taoiseach is now backing himself into the corner of arguing that the treaty is powerful enough to save the euro, but not significant enough to require a vote of the people. This approach is one which instinctively and rightly alienates people. Is it not a terrible indictment of the leaders of Europe that the Irish courts will soon hear State lawyers argue that this is a treaty which is too insignificant to require a vote? Does it not say something deeply depressing that our Government's position is that an unprecedented crisis is being met within existing policy limits?

The Taoiseach is well aware that there were people pushing the idea of parliamentary ratification of the revised Lisbon proposal. I and others refused to agree to this because we saw that such a move could cause permanent damage to the public's support for the EU. It was rightly decided to let the people decide. This position was supported by Fine Gael and the Labour Party in this House and in the campaign. Sinn Féin was true to its 40 year record of attacking every single EU treaty change and worked to use the referendum to promote itself rather than any constructive proposal. The manoeuvring we have seen from Sinn Féin and other anti-EU groups is entirely based on wanting to have something to campaign against.

My party yesterday commissioned an independent legal opinion which will deal with both the ratification process and, more importantly, the actual legal impact of the final text. I was disappointed that the Taoiseach did not refer to any issues arising out of the treaty in this context. In particular, he referenced article 3.2. This article refers to creating a scenario which is binding and of permanent character, which would appear to restrict the capacity of future Dáileanna to change position in terms of the parameters of this treaty. I would have been interested in the Taoiseach's comments on that, even if he is awaiting the advice of the Attorney General.

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