Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

The European Union is not perfect, neither is the euro, the Commission, the European Central Bank or even this treaty because if they were perfect we would be finished with them. Our enterprise would be over and we would move on to something else. They are human institutions and because they are they are flawed. They require constant attention, work and endeavours to improve them. Because they are political, there will not always be a right and a wrong but there will always be a need to engage constantly and work on these institutions because things change. If an institution cannot change and adapt it will become irrelevant because it will no longer meet the needs of the people or the time that it is there to serve.

I have been reading Fukuyama's book on The Origins of Political Order recently and he talks about the concept of adaptability and when political institutions face decay. Politics and democracy face decay when political systems fail to adjust to new realities. That is what we are facing here at present, particularly when we consider the European context. The European Union and its member states have faced a massive economic shock. That shock has exposed flaws in the infrastructure and in the institutions - political, financial, economic and social. We are looking again at everything. The member states are now changing to try to meet the new changed circumstances, to try to adapt the European institutions and the tools available to us to better meet the needs and circumstances of the people in Europe. We are not quite sure where that adjustment will take us. We do not know what the final outcome will be and there will not be a final outcome because it will constantly keep changing. What we must hope is that we have the right leadership and that it is taking us in the right direction. However, mistakes will be made because that is human nature and political nature. Mistakes can sometimes be a good thing because through them we will learn and we will build better institutions but it is a work in progress and a process. We must continually put our best efforts not into constantly criticising and walking away but into critically engaging to try to improve.

In Ireland we are facing the exact same challenge. We have had a shock to the system and to the country. Recent history has exposed massively the need for our political institutions and our democracy to change and adjust. The big question facing us in government is whether we can meet that adjustment but I believe we can meet it. Then the question remains to what will we adjust and what will we become after this current period where so much is changing and so much needs to change. What will the outcome of that process be? We do not yet know. It is important that it happens. We must move to a different type of democracy, a more robust democracy, because what we have had before has not served us well and it will not serve us in the future because so much is changing.

The great difficulty for us is that we are not masters of our own fate at present. Part of our sovereignty has been suspended because of the bailout agreement. Because of the massive deficit and our inability to borrow aboard at affordable rates we remain too exposed to external events. Because we cannot borrow aboard on our own at present we are too exposed to dictation and direction from abroad, and that needs to change. If we are to be able to change the country, as we need to, then we need to regain our independence. One of the priorities, if not the foremost priority, of the Government is to regain our economic independence, our sovereignty and our ability to borrow abroad independently. While it might sound counter-intuitive we need access to a permanent bailout fund in order not ever to have need to use it. We need access to the European Stability Mechanism, either because we will not be able to borrow independently post-2013, and we hope that will not be the case, or that when we go to borrow, we can borrow on more favourable terms because those borrowings will be in effect guaranteed or insured by the European Stability Mechanism. That is why we need the stability treaty because it will give us access to the ESM. It does other things as well but those were things we were going to do anyway.

I would like to focus on that one aspect, that the treaty will give us access to the ESM. That is incredibly important if we are to return as a sovereign nation to the markets abroad. People will argue about the process involved, the treaty and the fact it contains that clause and let them argue about that but the fact remains this is where we are. We need to ratify this treaty to get access to the ESM and that is an important thing and no amount of debate will change that. This is the question that faces us and we must face up to it. People will use this referendum to talk about things such as fiscal union, debt sustainability, promissory notes and their renegotiation and the future of the euro but this is the wrong campaign for that. They will use this referendum to talk about water changes, property taxes, the household charge and everything else but it is the wrong referendum for that.

What is facing us is quite a simple choice, and Deputy Mitchell referred to this. It is a simple treaty. If we choose this treaty, we will have access to the ESM and in that scenario we should be able to return to the foreign markets as an independent sovereign at a closer date. In that scenario we should be able to exit the bailout agreement on favourable terms to this country and retain our independence. That is what we as a Government want to achieve. That is the kind of change we want to see and want to bring into our country and to our political institutions so we can move to a post-bailout scenario and have our independence again. That is what this is about.

Once the referendum is held and if it is passed successfully, and I believe it will be, we can move to the bigger questions and debates that must be held. We are in a period of such rapid change that we have constantly to keep going back to the table and re-evaluating where it is exactly we are going, not only with the European Union and the other structures that exist with it but with our own political institutions and our own democracy. Then we can have the big debates and answer the big questions about our institutions and about what needs to happen in this country to improve the circumstances for everybody. That, ultimately, is the goal of the Government, to improve the circumstances for everybody in this country because they are not great at present. That is the time to answer those bigger questions. Right now we have a simple question in front of us. Let us enter that campaign and let us talk about that and that only and then we can have a bigger debate around the bigger questions.

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