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

Last week's summit involved no significant breakthrough on any of the major issues facing the European Union. While there are very important policies being rolled out or discussed at the moment, they were not on the agenda, rendering the summit itself more of a sideshow than a main event. A defining feature of the last four years has been the Government's non-stop effort to spin everything and to ignore cynically many wider issues that have a big impact here. Developments in Europe have been central to our economic pick-up, yet no member of the Government has ever acknowledged this. There have been banal generalities about wanting Europe to do well, but the direct impact of European decisions on what has happened here has been ignored. This is important because our Government keeps missing opportunities and is denying the people the opportunity to see what could and should be done to relieve debt pressures.

For this summit, a lot of work went into briefing the media about the Taoiseach's agenda, but we know less today than before the summit. In different so-called exclusives, the Taoiseach's staff briefed that he was determined that there would be no pre-election budget giveaways, that there would be major tax cuts and that he wanted the ability to spend up to €1.5 billion more without breaking EU rules. We were told that he was both against extra budget flexibility and in favour of it. That begs the question, which is it. It is just a continuation of the same old trick of trying to be on both sides of the fence at the same time. This is a Taoiseach who voted against the majority of budget changes for which he now claims credit, namely, the budgetary adjustments that underpinned the fiscal recovery, a Taoiseach who spent a decade condemning the failure to spend more and now condemns the fact that so much was spent.

I welcome the additional budget flexibility that has been extended to France and other countries. That reflects the reality of a weak European economy that cannot recover without investment. It is a great pity that the German Government did not also agree to play a part in the necessary flexibility by encouraging more domestic demand.

In a few months, we will witness the next shot in our election campaign through the introduction of a spring Budget Statement. This is an unprecedented use of the Civil Service to prepare a Government's election manifesto, as it will set out four years' worth of spending and tax proposals that have no administrative or legal status other than to serve as an election tool. In fact, the Taoiseach essentially admitted this when he said that it would show what Fine Gael and Labour would do if re-elected.

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