Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The latest meeting of the European Council was largely a formal affair. The Council had many important topics on its agenda, but it reached no decisions beyond what had already been well flagged and predictable. For all of the Taoiseach’s repeated claims that job creation and growth are the absolute focus, nothing agreed at the summit will make a major contribution to dragging Europe out of the current prolonged crisis. There is no urgency or ambition, only a growing complacency. The Taoiseach has told us that he and the other members of the Council are delivering huge progress, but the evidence is very different.

In the past few days the European Central Bank has again cut growth forecasts for the euro area. Following the logic of the ECB's analysis, it is likely that it will also cut its forecast for growth in Ireland. In the middle of the Government’s escalating campaign of self-praise it refuses to acknowledge that it has missed every one of its own growth forecasts. Progress on fiscal consolidation has been the result of interest rate reductions handed to Ireland as a result of negotiations in which we did not participate and the impact of measures 70% of which Fine Gael and the Labour Party voted against. The ECB is now stating much of the eurozone risks falling back into deflation. Given that the Bundesbank has started talking about the risk of rising inflation in Germany and the possible need for interest rate rises to stop this, there is a risk that the ECB will fall back into the old default policy of setting rates which damage rather than help growth.

The reality of lower growth and threatened deflation is completely excluded from the picture painted by the Taoiseach.

Collectively, the leaders have provided no credible map forward for the European Union to become a driver of growth and fix the serious flaws in the design of the euro.  One of the major reasons for this is that many leaders such as the Taoiseach appear more interested in managing the media than pushing for action which is ambitious enough to help.

The summit took place in the early phases of the Government's plans for a massive outbreak of self-praise next month. Starting at the Fine Gael conference and continuing through a mounting media campaign, the intention is to signal the end of the troika programme as a glorious achievement.

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