Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy McHugh for sharing his time with me.

I welcome the opportunity to say a few brief words in this debate and to commend the Bill to the House and, indeed, to the public on polling day.

Twice in my lifetime, and I am sure more often in your lifetime, a Cheann Chomhairle, the public finances were plundered for electoral gain. The fiscal treaty is a mechanism whereby the political classes will not be in a position to plunder the public purse for electoral gain while consigning people to mass emigration and record levels of unemployment. This happened in the 1980s. When I was leaving college most of my classmates emigrated. Fortunately, many of those people returned in the late 1990s and have families here. Regrettably, their children are now reaping the whirlwind of poor management of the public finances. At the core of the debate on this treaty is the putting in place of structures that will prohibit that kind of plundering of the public purse and of raising levels of public expenditure that are not sustainable on the basis of taxes that are transient by nature.

We recall what happened in the late 1970s, consigning a generation to emigration and high unemployment in the 1980s. Regrettably, we see history repeating itself. The elimination of the boom and bust cycle is the single greatest reason we should endorse the treaty. It is not a case of capitalism versus socialism. If my understanding is correct the treaty is being recommended by all member states of various political hues - socialist, capitalist, left wing, right wing, centre left and centre right - so it is not an ideological issue. Sane finance is never complicated in such a fashion.

I wish to raise an issue of housekeeping with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan. On polling day I do not wish to see polling booths staffed by public servants on secondment from their current employment in receipt of a day's pay for working as poll clerks and presiding officers. We have 450,000 people unemployed and it is time we made a concerted effort to get them into those positions on polling day.

In responding to the debate I would like the Minister to deal with an issue that is critical to the content of the 11 page treaty, namely, structural deficit. Could he outline what is the acceptable pan-European definition of structural deficit because it varies from state to state? That will be a critical issue in terms of interpretation of the rigour within which we will have to operate. I am satisfied that it is not the straitjacket that the "No" campaign invokes. It is interesting to note that not a single Member from among those advocating a "No" vote is present in the Chamber. One would have thought that they were so committed to the cause that one of them might at least be present to listen to the debate. I am satisfied the treaty is not a straitjacket that would prohibit us from having a stimulus budget, for example, if that were necessary at various times in our economic cycle. Such flexibility is built into the treaty. Equally, it gives us the same say in respect of the budgets of other states who will endorse the treaty in respect of such matters as we will seek for ourselves.

The other issue that is very different about this treaty in comparison with , for example, the Lisbon treaty to which Deputy McHugh referred, is that in the Lisbon treaty we effectively had a veto. When we rejected the Lisbon treaty in the first referendum, it meant that 26 member states across Europe who had endorsed the treaty up to that point could not proceed. However, the reality now is that if 12 member states - all of the other member states will ratify the treaty by parliamentary processes - ratify the treaty, it will come into effect. If we say "No" then we will not be able to hold up the rest of Europe which will move on without us. That will mean we would stand out from the crowd in Europe at a time when the common currency, which is a critical although not exclusive component of the debate, is a crucial issue. That is not the kind of signal we should send as a small, open trading economy that is dependent on exports for our economic recovery. A critical issue to bear in mind is that we do not have a veto.

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