Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This week marks the third anniversary of the formation of this Government and the beginning of this Dáil. While many challenges remain, and many of the Deputies in this House have touched on them, there are clear signs of strong and durable progress that has been made in many areas. In this contribution I want to provide an emphasis on what has been achieved by particularly focusing on the role of our Government in Europe and the achievements of our recent Presidency of the European Union. I will touch on what was achieved under our Presidency and refer to progress that has been made and work in the areas of developing Oireachtas scrutiny and oversight of EU legislation and the ways in which we are seeking to improve and deepen our understanding of Europe and its institutions at home. I will conclude with some observations on the main challenges that await the Government within Europe during our next two years in office.

When we came into office, as Deputies will be aware, Ireland had officially become a programme country. We were availing of financial assistance from the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, IMF. This occurred after many weeks of speculation as to how the IMF would arrive and whether it was here. With our international reputation on the floor, we were faced with the very significant job of renegotiating a poor deal with the troika and of achieving a better outcome for Ireland.

The situation within which we arrived in office was grim and extremely difficult. Every day, news came in of more factories to close, more businesses going bust and an unemployment figure that went up month after month. Our banks were a mess. Our young homeowners were being strangled by personal debt. Any hope of a brighter future seemed very distant. I am not suggesting that our new Government coming in provided the solution to all of these difficulties. However, with the determination and energy the Government has shown, which mirrored what the Irish people have shown across same period, progress has been made, achievements have been delivered and we have set out to right some of the wrongs of the previous 14 years and deal with many of he difficulties we faced.

In our time in government we have stemmed the flow of job losses that was crippling our country and sending too many of our young people away. We have put measures in place to give those with jobs certainty about their take-home pay, and for those who do not have jobs we have put great effort in to improve their chances of getting work and a better future. I am still aware of how much more needs to be done in this area, but during our term of office progress has been made. Initiatives such as the Action Plan for Jobs, Pathways to Work, JobBridge and Springboard have helped our country move to a point where it has harnessed and supported the entrepreneurship and creativity of Irish people from a situation where we were losing 7,000 jobs a month to one where 61,000 new jobs were created last year. That is a significant change for a lot of people and families but there are many more who need help.

Our unemployment rate has gone from 15.1% to just over 12% with the live register falling for over 20 months. We must continue to build on this progress. The Government’s commitment to getting that figure down below 10% by 2016 and the country back to full employment by 2020 shows how much more needs to be done. Across that period, the sacrifices made by the Irish people have ensured that although our country was the second to enter into a bailout programme, we were the first to leave. Our bond yields have decreased from well over 14% to under 4%. The Anglo Irish promissory notes have been torn up and we have seen major progress in the cost, efficiency and delivery of public services.

Much of this has been achieved through remaining at the heart of Europe. We have maintained our political engagement and our influence by our willingness to send out a loud and clear message that the Ireland of the recent past is not the Ireland of the future and that both Ireland and Europe must change to achieve a positive and secure future. Last year, much of this was achieved during our seventh Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Under Ireland’s term in that office, agreement was reached on the €960 billion multi-annual financial framework, MFF, which enabled and supported many of the plans that are targeted at dealing with lack of growth and the crisis of unemployment.

The focus on youth employment and the need to ensure training and support for our young people saw the agreement of the youth guarantee, funded through this European budget. It has delivered across Europe an €8 billion package dedicated to tackling this issue of those without a job, training or apprenticeship opportunity, ensuring that is available for them, particularly for people under the age of 24.

In a bid to make Ireland the best small country in the world in which to do business, we have been developing and progressing trade links overseas, including an historic EU-US transatlantic trade and investment partnership, the TTIP programme. Negotiations on this were launched under our Presidency of the Council of the European Union and it has the potential to make a huge change to trade and investment between the European Union and the United States of America. The changed mandate of the European Investment Bank, allowing it to provide support to projects such as the Grangegorman campus, in my constituency of Dublin Central, will provide and has provided direct employment to many local communities and strategically important infrastructure projects. Finally, the delivery of a more robust banking union, through the single supervisory mechanism, will facilitate renewed confidence in the financial system across the eurozone. Early agreement on the single resolution mechanism, SRM, will allow us to resolve issues with our banks in the same way as we monitor them, centrally. These developments also bring us a step closer to dealing with Ireland’s legacy debt issues.

In the same way that our banks must demonstrate transparency, greater transparency is also required in regard to the work of the Oireachtas and its engagement in the work of the Government on European affairs. The Oireachtas must also be allowed engage directly in European affairs and politics. As Members will know from their work on various Oireachtas joint committees, significant changes have been made to deliver more effective parliamentary engagement with EU legislation and policy. Enhanced EU scrutiny by relevant committees ensures that legislative proposals published by the Commission are considered by Oireachtas Members with expertise in the relevant policy area. This is a notable change from the past.

The old European scrutiny committee had responsibility for overseeing policy initiatives, directives and statutory instruments across every area of Government policy. This has changed and now every Oireachtas committee will have the opportunity to understand the proposals and directives and engage in the work from the Commission in their area. This new approach also includes regular committee engagement with Ministers prior to meetings of the Council. For example, Deputy McGrath will be aware that if the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, has an engagement with ECOFIN or the Eurogroup, he will brief the committee of which Deputy McGrath is a member on the work and allow the members to put their views. This is an initiative that is taking place across most Oireachtas committees. If the Minister has an engagement with his or her relevant Council of Ministers, he or she will brief the committee and hear the views of committee members on that engagement.

However, there is room for improvement. Scrutiny systems in general should be seen as a work in progress. While we have made changes, and I believe they are working better than in the past, I must make clear that we are examining the current system with a view to improving it during the lifetime of this Dáil. Supporting early and focused engagement by Oireachtas committees in the EU legislative process will address issues of duplication or inefficiency, make it easier and more effective for the Oireachtas and its staff to report on legislative initiatives and changes, and allow better scrutiny and implementation of EU law. I want to examine further how we can allow Deputies and Senators to have an earlier opportunity to become aware of initiatives being undertaken within the European Union. This will allow the Houses to become more aware of their capacity under the Lisbon treaty and give them a better opportunity to exercise those roles and increased powers.

Consulting Departments through the interdepartmental committee on EU engagement, ICEE, which I chair, is also key to ensuring a more integrated role for the Oireachtas in the policy decisions taken at European level. At this stage, I have written to all Oireachtas committees and asked them to provide me with an evaluation and assessment of how they believe these changes are working, whether they are working well and what further changes, if any, they would recommend. While some committees have responded, not all of them have. I look forward to receiving a full update from all of them. I then propose to make suggested changes to committees in the context of work that may arise over the next two years. I will build on the good changes that have been made and deal with the frustrations I am aware Members still have regarding how we conduct this area of our business.

In a bid to deepen the understanding of Europe and bring EU institutions closer to home, a number of initiatives have been undertaken. Through the Blue Star primary schools programme, our young children are taught the benefits of the diversity that comes with membership of the European Union. I hope that learning about other member states - their geography, culture, history, art and languages - will give our young children a better understanding of what it means to be part of the European family and will allow them, at some future point, to have a stronger connection with the European Union.

Another initiative under way is the EU jobs campaign, which is being led by the Department of the Taoiseach and which aims to educate our graduates about the benefits of a career in the Commission, the Parliament or the Council. Ireland has always been very well represented in the EU institutions, but this could change in the coming years due to the fact that a significant number of people face imminent retirement or may move on to other careers. We are now putting measures in place to make Irish graduates more aware of the opportunities and to support them if they decide to apply for these jobs. We will also work within our Civil Service and public services to provide them with opportunities and help to avail of career opportunities within the European institutions. With this in mind, I have been visiting a number of our third level universities, talking to students and reminding them of the opportunities open to them. I have also been explaining the help the Government will provide as they make their way through the recruitment process in a bid to achieve jobs within these institutions. I will continue that work next week in visits to DCU, DIT, the University of Limerick and NUI Maynooth.

The adoption of Europe Week also provides further opportunities for debate on Europe and the work being done there by dedicating a week in May to allow the Dáil to debate European Union priorities for Ireland and by allowing the discussion of legislation and examination of relevant EU issues. This change in how we do business will, hopefully, allow Members, political parties and Independent Members the opportunity to express their views on what is happening within Europe and our engagement with it and provide an opportunity for further debate and engagement.

Looking to the future, we must ensure the jobs and growth agenda remains central to all of our activity at EU level. If the first three years in Government were about restoring stability, the next two - until the end of the Dáil term - are about prosperity and progress and how these can be best achieved to further jobs and growth. To achieve this, we must focus on three priorities. First, we must ensure that an emphasis on job creation and the restoration of economic growth remains strong at European level. We can do this by sustaining the economic recovery, increasing employment and addressing the social dimension. Europe and all of its institutions have a vital role in this through completion of the banking union, through maintaining and developing the role of bodies such as the European Investment Bank and through completion and deepening of the Single Market to allow Irish companies, employees and those who want to gain work the best opportunity possible to access markets abroad and ensure our goods and services can be sold on a level playing field. This must be supported by the other measures, to which the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have referred, in the context of supporting and developing a domestic economy and indigenous companies to ensure they too have greater opportunities to avail of increasing domestic demand at home and deliver more jobs.

Second, we must continue our engagement in the eurozone semester process, which Ireland will participate in for the first time this year, through the Oireachtas and the Government. Stability in the eurozone and the EU financial sector is key. Having a banking system in place that has the confidence of the people, is properly regulated and has the capacity to lend to all kinds of companies, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, is central to increasing the number of jobs at home and getting our people back to work.

Finally, we must advance Irish interests in the wake of many changes that will take place in the second half of this year in the aftermath of the election of a new European Parliament and the appointment of a new Commission. We have to continue to promote an understanding of the EU and to address the concerns felt by the public on issues that matter to them. There will be much change in the institutions involved in all of this work in the second half of the year, and we have to be vigilant and positive in promoting and advocating Irish interests in this period.

This month, in a survey of democracy, The Economistquotes the founders of modern democracy in America, James Madison and John Stuart Mill, one of the leading thinkers in the work to establish representative democracy hundreds of years ago, who regarded the democratic process as "a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be [...] constantly oiled, adjusted and worked upon." The European Union is no different. The Government is resolute in its work in this area. We are unwavering in our determination to build on the progress we have made so far in restoring Ireland and building a stronger European Union, one in which Ireland remains at the very heart.

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