Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is fairly difficult to predict the agenda of the Council meeting because the Brexit referendum either will dominate or will not.

The concern is that it will dominate the agenda and overshadow some of the other issues which are of critical importance, none less so than the refugee crisis. The handling of the crisis by Europe should be at the core of what is discussed along with changing the direction of how it has been handled. The EU has faced two major challenges in recent years: the financial crash and now the refugee crisis. One cannot but look and say it has failed miserably on both fronts. It has failed because one of the founding principles of the EU, as opposed to the EEC, was solidarity, yet one is not seeing that in evidence, certainly in the case of the refugee crisis. Neither was it seen in the response to the financial crash, which was very much about the intergovernmental approach, the strong and the idea of a collection of nation states, which was not what was intended. The EU will fail if it proceeds in that fashion.

It is essential that the EU is democratic and that solidarity is at its heart. I quote Mr. Jürgen Habermas, whom our President quoted in a speech he gave a few years ago to the European Parliament. He was speaking prior to the refugee crisis.

If one wants to preserve the monetary union, it is no longer enough, given the structural imbalances between the national economies, to provide loans to over-indebted states so that each should improve its competitiveness by its own efforts. What is required is solidarity instead, a co-operative effort from a shared political perspective to promote growth and competitiveness in the eurozone as a whole.

We did not see that, but it is still possible to see it. There is a willingness from those in power to distance themselves from the humanitarian crisis by referring to it more as a "migrant crisis". It is interesting that al-Jazeera, for example, has refused to use the term, preferring to use "refugee crisis". That is what it is: a refugee crisis.

There must be a complete shift. Even our own very limited offering of assistance has not lived up to its expectations. The decision to send refugees to Turkey was very shameful on behalf of the EU. We might ask ourselves, "What if it was us?". It was us. We have had big migrations. One can look at the 19th century where people who were poverty-stricken and sick left this country and ended up in other countries, yet the narrative around refugees, migrants or the big exodus that is happening is all about negativity. We celebrate our diaspora and talk about the positive contribution that they can make. However, that narrative is not feeding into the discussions that are going on at the moment with regard to this refugee crisis.

In the short time that remains, I wish to talk about the European fund for strategic investments. We had a debate here recently where there was a document sent. It was a debate over a couple of days on the stability programme update. Essentially, we told the European Commission that housing was a medium-term risk. We have a housing crisis here and yet we did not properly reflect that in the documents that we sent to the European Commission. Unless we call it what it is and share that information, we are going to run into some difficulties in resolving the problem. Given the level of our indebtedness, we are simply going to have to leverage funds off balance sheet. Some of the large-scale funds are obvious, such as the credit unions, which have money, and others. The European Investment Bank is one of those areas. It is also one of those areas in which we can make sure we do not incur costs on the other side. For example, with regard to the climate issue, there is the choice between the obligation to spend money on fines or to plan not to have fines and do the right thing. The European Investment Bank is going to be critically important in doing some of that work. It is really important that we properly articulate what the needs of this country are and how that European Investment Bank can be something that would be productive and that can be used in solidarity for things that progress us as a people and a continent.

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