Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

Exactly. Any country with a deficit higher than 3% is included, thus most euro countries. Under these proposals the Commission and the Council would be able to examine national draft budgets and adopt an opinion on them before their adoption by the Parliament. Therefore, the entire secrecy in the budgetary process would be exempted in order to allow the Commission to decide what would be in our budget. In addition, it would be entitled to suggest amendments. I find much of this very concerning. While others seem to welcome it with open arms and express support for it, I do not believe much thought has been given to it. The language used is: "in the case of slippages of an adjustment programme closer monitoring and coordination of programme implementation will take place". That is what the Government signed up for a couple of weeks ago. It may be necessary in the context of receiving financial aid from other countries but in terms of the normal run of countries, we are ceding even more sovereignty to the European Commission because currently under the EU-IMF arrangement, we have broad capacity to decide what will be in our budget as long as we reach the targets set out in terms of annual deficits. That is the reality and what the IMF said. The Government can do what it likes in the budget as long as it achieves a certain target. The Government has full economic sovereignty over what it wants to do. Even if we were in the bond market and not the IMF, we would have to reach certain targets and our choices would be limited.

I would like to ask the Minister of State about the EFSF bond auction yesterday, which was cancelled last week. What is the Government doing in terms of a contingency plan? It is deeply worrying if the EFSF cannot borrow money on the markets or is only getting a limited demand for the money. What is the Government doing in terms of a fall-back? Are we sitting back and waiting for "Merkozy" or whatever one wants to call them to tell us what is going on because unfortunately, that is what has been happening? When the Taoiseach and the Minister of State came back from Brussels in July with the reduced interest rate, we all welcomed that. They also claimed credit for the extension of the terms of the loans when that very week in the Dáil, the Taoiseach said he was not looking an extension of the terms of the loans. In our interests, the Government must be more actively engaged in what is going on in Europe because it seems we are not doing anything. If this all goes belly up, will we say "Oh no! Merkozy did not work it out"? We must work it out.

I take issue with something the Minister of State said which was also said by the Government earlier this year, namely, the allegation that Fianna Fáil Ministers did not attend European meetings. The evidence suggests the opposite. A study was done in Sweden which found that Ireland was the fifth best attender at European meetings over a ten-year period. The Minister of State, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Tánaiste spoke about the tragedy that Ireland did not attend meetings. The table done by Swedish academics shows that we were number five. A very wrong message was sent out. I was certainly annoyed with the previous Government when I heard that but when I checked the facts, the allegation did not stand up.