Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It might be helpful if both of the main parties calmed down a little on this issue and earthed themselves into what is happening in the real world. The reality is that the discussion document from Europe is hardly an assault on our sovereignty. On the other hand, it is a bit rich for Fianna Fáil to describe Deputy Richard Bruton as a Eurosceptic or jingoistic; that is not his style. We are seeing the first bouts of a general election programme. It behoves those of us who are not involved in the parties to examine this issue with a different view.

The reality is that European conditions on budgetary matters are not anything new. Before we ratified the Maastricht treaty we turned ourselves backwards in order to meet its conditions, including a budget deficit of 3% and 60% debt GNP ratio. Nobody in the main parties felt that was any sort of an imposition or intrusion on our sovereignty. When Deputy Bruton has regularly and correctly raised issues the response from the Government side has been over the top, and has been so on this occasion. He is correct about one thing - there is no openness in budgetary matters, but that was also the case when Fine Gael was in Government, I hasten to add. There is nothing new about that for the rest of us who have always asked for a more open approach to the budget.

Before we continue this debate we should remember that there are 500,000 unemployed people in Ireland and 500,000 people who are struggling with mortgages who know that were it not for European intervention and involvement and the euro, we would we be paying mortgage and interest rates four times that which we are currently paying.