Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

Passing this Bill is the culmination of a process the Government has engaged in with the Irish people in an open and of frank discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of giving the green light to Ireland's participation in and being a signatory to both the fiscal treaty and the ESM treaty. After weeks of debate, the nation gave a decisive vote to proceed with the plan to restore this country to a state of economic prosperity and that we engage with our fellow members of the EU to build a stable Europe for our children, that we ratify the ESM treaty to ensure the stability of the euro is secured and, by extension, that the availability of funding at affordable interest rates is a certainty instead of an aspiration.

The ratification of this treaty and its implementation, which will hopefully take place in January, will lay the foundations for a European economy free from the budgetary mayhem that has caused so much pain and hurt to families in Ireland and across the European Union. It will remove the concept of less fiscally responsible member states visiting recession upon the entire euro area. It will, in time, deliver a European economy capable of providing the economic stability essential to encourage the growth and prosperity required to ensure that future generations can live peacefully in the knowledge their homes and jobs will not disappear overnight in another economic meltdown such as we have experienced.

In ratifying this treaty, we are putting in place an access route to affordable finance, should it be required. The very fact this support mechanism is in place should provide the international confidence to launch us successfully back on to the market in 2013 or 2014. The importance of international confidence in our ability to act rationally and responsibly is a major help to those institutions charged with the task of attracting inward investment and to those who have sustained their fragile growth figures through these harrowing times by excelling in the international marketing and the export of quality goods to the four corners of the world. To these people, who are the cornerstone of our recovery, it is important we lend every assistance and support and what better way to encourage them on to greater things than to provide the economic climate conducive to their successful endeavours?

In ratifying this treaty, Ireland is restoring its integrity and securing its position as a respected and proud nation willing to play its part in solving the economic problems facing the euro area and participating in the establishment of a fiscal policy capable of ensuring the European economy is never again subjected to such self-inflicted chaos. While offering my unequivocal support for this Bill, it is incumbent upon me to call for a broadening of article 15 to make provision for direct financial assistance towards the recapitalisation of the banks, whereby the arrangement would be directly between the bank in question and the fund, with no Government involvement and no laying of the burden of bank debt of an innocent population who are neither responsible for the banking excesses nor the banking collapse. These are the people to whom the banks have closed their doors and they should not bear sovereign responsibility for the recklessness of the financiers among us who took part in the orgy of great and self-enrichment. Let the banks borrow the money to replenish their funds and let the banks pay it back. These institutions offer no benevolence to those who fall on hard times, often incurred through the recklessness of the banking sector. It is morally wrong to inflict responsibility for banking debt on the public.

I understand the fiscal treaty and the ESM were not intended to deal with bank debt but we have heard calls for that since last week, and I call on everyone in the House to support the Taoiseach and Ministers in their endeavours to secure this policy change. This single measure would make a huge contribution to removing banking debt from a repayments budget and would be a huge boost financially and morally to a compliant people eager to restore their economic integrity and prosperity.

I listened to the tail end of Deputy Calleary's contribution and to Deputy Mathews's contribution. Deputy Calleary mentioned the concept of fiscal union but he was mistaken. We are not in a fiscal union; that is the problem with the eurozone. A monetary union was created in response to the political will to achieve that but those involved did not have the courage of their convictions to go down the route of the fiscal unity which is necessary to have any stable currency. I agree with Deputy Mathews that it is self-evident that if we want to solve the crisis at the heart of euro project, we need the ECB to act like a Central Bank and be a lender of last resort, to be the bank of default. We must ensure the debts incurred in the banking sector are transferred from people to the ECB. To achieve that we must have further centralisation of financial control. This is crunch time for the euro project. Do we believe as a people that fiscal union should be the end result of this project? There would be a problem with our corporate tax rate and other areas but it is time for politicians across Europe to have some courage and to spell out clearly what they want. For the euro project to survive in the long term, we need greater fiscal union. It is will be interesting to see if the politicians across Europe have the ability to make this possible or whether project will unravel in the near future.

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