Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ó Fearghaíl asked some good questions. It is completely unacceptable that 28 million people are unemployed in the European Union. No leader can be happy with that situation. Depending on competitiveness and whether budgets are under control, the position as regards unemployment and employment will vary between countries. I visited Spain and Portugal recently. The rate of unemployment among young people in Spain is 57%, which is a horrendous problem and would be an enormous challenge for any prime minister. Portugal also has a significant level of unemployment among young people and Greece announced last week that more than 50% of its young people are unemployed. What is to be done? One issue that has to be dealt with is the European Union budget for the period from 2014 until 2020, which is known as the multi-annual financial framework or MFF. Under the current proposal, a €6 billion fund has been allocated for addressing youth unemployment. Following the European Council meeting, there is a direct focus on countries preparing effective programmes to provide opportunities for young people and front-loading this allocation, which they cannot access until the MFF has been agreed. This is the purpose of the Tánaiste's visit to Brussels today. The Irish Presidency hopes to secure agreement on the multi-annual financial framework in the next couple of weeks.

This is an urgent matter. When one speaks to the Austrian Chancellor, Dutch Prime Minister or leaders of other countries which have low rates of unemployment, Germany for example, one finds that they have a structure in place for providing young people with training and apprenticeships. In Austria, for instance, when a young person decides to leave the formal education system there is a structure in place for channelling him or her into an area that would be of interest and in which he or she would develop skills and so forth. As a result, the level of youth unemployment in Austria is very low - perhaps 3%, 4% or 5% - whereas it is more than 30% here and we also have continuing emigration.

The agenda of last week's meeting was limited because the issues were of such importance. When one starts to discuss issues with 27 different member states, all of them will have a view. VAT fraud costs in the order of €1 trillion each year and systems need to be put in place to deal with the problem. The digital world has clearly moved ahead of the capacity of taxation systems to be able to catch all of these activities. The issues of VAT fraud and tax evasion were the subject of significant discussion at the meeting. Some comments were also made about multinational companies, which had implications for Ireland. While individual companies were not mentioned, I was happy to clarify for the European Council that Ireland wants to be part of an international movement in setting new international codes of practice, whether this is the FATCA system in place in the United States or a new code that emerges globally. This is an issue on which European leaders are now focused.

Deputy Ó Fearghaíl made a point about energy, an important issue. If we do not understand that energy prices are impacting on costs and, therefore, competitiveness, we will not be at the races. I can testify that serious developments in the United States in the areas of fracking, shale gas and extra drilling have led to a decline in the country's energy dependency. It is expected that the United States will become an energy exporter in the next decade and the country's energy costs have dropped by more than 30%, whereas they have increased by the same amount in Europe. As a result of these developments, major investment can take place in the United States at fixed-term prices and with relatively low energy costs. This has implications for jobs in Ireland and every other country. European leaders must agree on an integrated, interconnected European grid for energy. Ireland is at the end of this pipeline, which has significant implications for those who are working in manufacturing and industry. Three quarters of the meeting was spent discussing energy and decisions were made on which we hope to follow through in June.

The other issue discussed was on securing agreement in principle from countries that were very secretive about taxation and sharing information on tax matters. As I stated, we need to recognise that the digital world has swiftly moved far ahead of the capacity of individual national tax systems to cater for it. There is a need for a political focus from leaders to deal with this issue and this was accepted in principle by everyone who attended the meeting.

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