Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Danish Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt shared a platform with the Taoiseach in Davos not so long ago. At the time, the Taoiseach informed the world at large that Ireland was in difficulty because we had all gone mad borrowing. On that occasion the Danish Premier was much more insightful and she best encapsulated what had happened when she argued that we were in a position where banks were too big to fail and citizens were too small to matter. The sub-committee of the Oireachtas European affairs committee has been commended in this House and it has heard evidence from a great range of opinion, including a wide range of economists from across the spectrum, including those who would be deemed centrists, left or right in their thinking. What they all have in common is that they have said very clearly that if the treaty had been in place a number of years ago, it would not have seen off the economic catastrophe and it would not have been the panacea for the problems we now have. Even in the Chamber I have yet to hear any Government proposition extolling the value in concrete terms of this treaty, except with regard to link between the treaty and the European stability mechanism, and our capacity to access funding through that mechanism. It strikes me that it is the only concrete argument being advanced.

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