Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy talks about Europe being at a dangerous crossroads and he is right. There are a range of issues that are very sensitive, very difficult to resolve and very real. At last week's European Council meeting, which was a very constructive meeting, the fault lines that now apply because of what is happening in Syria, Libya and other places were very clear with more than 1 million refugees in south Lebanon and 1 million in Jordan. Were both of these countries to collapse because there is no real plan to deal with that humanitarian crisis, the issue for Europe would not just be millions of refugees in single figures but millions in double figures.

When one hears a prime minister saying that what happens when refugees leave Turkey, which is a very short distance from some of the Greek isles, that as soon as a boat appears, dinghies that are grossly overladen with people are ripped asunder with knives so that they end up in the water and have to be saved or drowned, one can understand the challenge that this presents. The huge numbers of people, including women and children, walking into small countries in many cases exhausted and expected to be registered under the Dublin Agreement and the Schengen Agreement, has presented logistical issues they are unable to cope with.

Germany has taken in 500,000 refugees this year. Ireland, a small country that is not a member of Schengen and not inside the protocol, is because of our own tradition offering voluntarily to take in 4,000 refugees. Clearly the discussions that took place in New York yesterday are not conclusive in respect of what is going to happen in Syria. In this regard I have referred on other occasions to why things should be done to deal with migration. I recently opened a facility where one of the managing directors was a young woman who came here as a refugee with her parents. She was educated here and is contributing greatly to our society in a really important position.

The Deputy made the point about young people being unemployed and he is right. Let us consider where Ireland was four and a half years ago, locked out of all markets, interest rates of 15%, borrowings of €22.5 billion and haemorrhaging thousands of jobs every year.

However, in a short time, because the Government and people made difficult decisions, some economic indicators say we will grow by more than 5.5% this year and even more next year. Whether that will be the case or not remains to be seen. In many countries that have real difficulties, it is a question of making difficult decisions in those countries' interest to move them forward. It is grossly unacceptable to have 25 million young people unemployed. Everybody accepts that. We would like to think that due to our efforts here we will see more people with experience coming back next year than will leave.

Deputy Boyd Barrett mentioned right and left and extremes. Where young people are not given the opportunity to be challenged in terms of their careers and opportunities, they get frustrated, angry and take to the streets. They could be either on the right or the left. The centre, centre right and centre left are often forgotten. That is the momentum in terms of having to pull people in from the sides and move forward with any individual country. The Deputy might differ on that, from a political perspective. I am glad he said that one has to pay taxes to have roads. One has to pay taxes to have any service because nothing is free in this world. I hope that by the time we get to 2018, our country will have a balanced budget and the rules of the European Commission that tie us down in terms of the fiscal stability treaty will be very much relaxed.

See this speech in context