Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

It is not new on our part, but it has now been officially recognised at the highest political level. That work will begin at the eurogroup meeting on Monday which the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, will attend. His officials are liaising and preparing for that meeting. That work is under way, but it is not new from the Government's point of view because we have been undertaking that analysis all along.

The target date for the banking regulatory mechanism is the end of the year. The Commission has been mandated to come back with a report detailing how the mechanism should function. The role of the Commission is to produce these proposals which will be assessed by member states at the next summit. We will see very swift implementation.

It is possible that the element of banking union in question would not require such change. I am not the Attorney General and am not proposing to give definitive legal advice here in the Chamber, but I believe that if we were to proceed further with some of the measures the Government has been seeking, such as changing the mandate of the ESM and, more specifically, the introduction of eurobonds, which is the target for Ireland and many other member states in regard to debt mutualisation, it would be highly likely that treaty change would be required. I embrace that opportunity. If we are moving in the right direction, we should not fear treaty change. I have said this all along and said it in respect of the recent referendum that if treaty change is required and a referendum is necessitated, we will go down that road. I hope we will have the support of many of the Opposition parties on the next occasion.

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