Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues in the Technical Group for supporting the motion and other Members for their contributions, although many of the contributions were standard and disappointing in the context of the debate in the State about the future of Europe. The motion only calls for two simple actions - to initiate a debate through civil society on the future direction of the EU and to ensure treaty change includes a process to allow members to voluntary leave the eurozone and not the Union. What was missing from the Government contributions was a discussion about the future of the Union. That is a sign of the problems in the State and the Government. There is no discussion about the future. I remind Members that Barroso, Hollande and Merkel are all talking about the future and they have a map and a plan of where the future will lie. Barroso has said in the past that Europe has all the hallmarks of an empire. On 7 May, he stated: "The proposals he will bring forward on treaty change will look like political science fiction but they will be a reality in a few years time". He is looking to the future and he knows what future he wants for Europe. Hollande wants an EU government with harmonised taxes and budgets to tackle the crisis. Merkel wants more Europe and wants to work towards the creation of a European army. They know the future they want and is it because the Government parties know what it is that they do not want to have this debate and do not want the people to know where the future lies. The future is a united states of Europe or a federal Europe with an army and a centralised government in which a nation such as Ireland will have no say and will only be a small part of it.

The amendments tabled by Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are interesting. The parties have pegged their political futures and the future of this country to stabilising the euro and getting through this crisis with the euro intact. The trade off for that will be the political science fiction to which Barroso referred coming to fruition. The political parties will peg themselves to stabilising the euro and, in the meantime, sleepwalk the country into the united states of Europe. The Taoiseach stated in the House last June that this would never happen and he would never let it happen on his watch. However, it will happen over the next few years and we will wake up some morning and realise we are in a united states of Europe with everyone wondering how we got there. We will have arrived at that point because we pegged ourselves solely to the preservation of the euro. The only policy the Government is pursuing is to maintain the euro and the trade off for that will be the creation of the European super state that the elite in Europe wants to make a reality.

That is the sad reflection of this Government's policy on the eurozone and the euro currency. We should ensure a treaty change to allow a member state to voluntarily leave the euro and leave policy options open. Fianna Fáil said the euro is irrevocably and irreplaceably here to stay. The European Central Bank said the same and that it was never intended that any member state would leave the economic and monetary union but this motion calls for that option. It is a policy option which a Government can pursue but every party in this House has tied itself to the euro and the further integration to complete fiscal union and to the political union which goes with it.

Deputy Mitchell accused me of sedition for tabling this motion. I am afraid we need to see more sedition in this House. We saw the sedition of the Labour Party before the election when it promised all sorts of things in terms of what it would do in Europe. However, when it got under the ring of Fine Gael, which is the Irish version of the Tory Party and not anybody on the Independent benches, its sedition was slowly put to an end. We need more sedition and more debate about what the future holds so that we can make our decisions on the basis of knowledge and not blindly follow what we are told to do.

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