Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

-----that other leaders will come up with proposals that will benefit the citizens of this State". What the Taoiseach said is in the programme for Government. The Government needs to deliver the commitments made in the programme for Government and during the recent referendum campaign. The Taoiseach promised to remove the burden of the banking debt from taxpayers but this has not happened. He promised jobs, investment and stability and I regret very much that this has not happened. It is my certain view and also the view of many citizens that Europe's leaders are failing. Last July, they and the Taoiseach agreed to a restructuring of Greek debt but almost one year later and the situation is as bad as ever. Last autumn, the European Central Bank provided large-scale liquidity to banks to try to ease the situation in Spain and Italy but this has not worked either. Last December, the eurozone agreed the fiscal treaty and more money to end the crisis. I note what Deputy Martin said during that campaign and juxtapose it with what he has said today. The Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil - most of Fianna Fáil - persuaded citizens to vote for the treaty in May and this has not worked either.

I refer to the situation in Spain where €100 billion was allocated to help clean up that country's banking crisis but Spain's bond costs have risen even further. I have not had much time to study the Taoiseach's statement but he states he looks forward to the report from Herman Van Rompuy. However, this report is expected to demand even greater fiscal union within which the EU could intervene directly in the budgets of member states. More fiscal authority will be given away by the Government and supported by Fianna Fáil, despite all the protestations by Deputy Martin today. I welcome the Taoiseach's conversion to Sinn Féin policy because Sinn Féin policy has been consistently to argue for the ESM to fund banks directly. However, he needs to go beyond Government rhetoric on this important issue and he needs to advocate actively for this policy. Similarly, on the issue of growth and jobs, the Taoiseach needs to bring forward proposals for job creation and retention. He engages in revisionism in his statement today when he suggests the Government has long argued for such proposals. On the contrary, the record shows that he never mentioned jobs even once before the French presidential election. It is all a mess and the Taoiseach and his partners in Europe need to stop digging the hole deeper. Unless there is a radical change in the current policy the instability will continue and may result in the collapse of the euro. The Irish Government needs to work with other EU states to find a real solution to the eurozone crisis.

From the very start of this crisis, Sinn Féin has advocated a restructuring of private bank debt and a separation of bank debt and sovereign debt. Sinn Féin has argued consistently that the function of the ECB needs to be re-examined and it needs to fulfil the role of a lender of last resort. The current policy of austerity and bank bailouts has caused only greater instability in the eurozone. The one-size-fits-all monetary policy was part of the problem and it cannot work.

Sinn Féin is firmly of the view that what is required is a different approach based on investment and economic growth. A total of 24 million citizens are unemployed across the EU and in this State, 440,000 are on the live register. We see once again the scourge of emigration. The Taoiseach represents a rural constituency. I am currently doing a tour of rural Ireland and the situation is heart-breaking. The effects of emigration are more invisible in the cities but in some rural parishes, as many as 18 young men and as many young women are gone. Senior teams are unable to play games because they do not have sufficient numbers for a senior panel. The visit of President Michael D. Higgins to London last week illustrated how many of our young people are now ensconced there. We need our young people back and we will only get them back with investment in jobs. There is a fixation with austerity. Fine Gael is a conservative, right-wing party which has austerity at its core but for the Labour Party to embrace this policy goes beyond any sense of itself or its history or possibilities.

The crisis is a crisis of under-investment. The banking crisis led to a withdrawal of private sector investment from the domestic economy on an unprecedented scale. The result is the loss of jobs for many and of spending power for all. In the absence of private sector investment the State needs to fill the investment vacuum. This can be achieved by combining the resources of member states, for instance, combining the €5 billion in the discretionary portfolio of the National Pension Reserve Fund with an enlarged investment fund in the European Investment Bank.

This summit needs to give the people of Europe some hope that leaders have learned from the mistakes already made. The crisis has been made much worse by the policy of the European Central Bank, supported by the German Government and the previous French Government, of bailing out banks irrespective of the cost.

Austerity is part of the problem and a continuation of this bad policy will have devastating social and economic consequences. This can be seen in the numbers of patients on trolleys in our hospitals and the long waiting lists for treatment. I have given examples from Louth and I am sure the situation is similar right across the State. I note that some members of the Government are committed to cutting social welfare rates or to an increase in income taxes. The Taoiseach needs to stand up for Irish Interests at this summit and we need to stop the slide towards the collapse of the euro. This should not be another crisis summit which ends up with a commitment to hold yet another crisis summit. There must be a clear plan for renewal and growth and for jobs and investment. The European banking system must be cleansed of its toxic debts. There is an urgent need to reduce the debt levels across the eurozone through debt restructuring. The Taoiseach repeated this fallacy this morning that we will not be defaulters. The huge burden on citizens of the banking debt must be reduced. The crisis will not be brought to an end by greater fiscal integration, by giving away more fiscal power; it will not be brought to an end by austerity and by bank bailouts.

Sinn Féin recommends a strategy of investment, debt write-downs and market return. This is the type of plan which EU leaders need to agree this week. The Taoiseach must advocate this plan if he has not done so. He has not told the House of any plan. It appears he is going to the summit not as a player but as a spectator and I am disappointed in that.

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