Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and would like to pick up on the point Senator Colm Burke made. The Minister of State was chair of a sub-committee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Scrutiny of which I was a member in the last Administration. She brought forward proposals at that time which would be very much ad idem with what Senator Colm Burke suggested, so perhaps she would have a comment to make in that regard because the new configuration of committees cannot physically, mentally, logistically and in every other way deal with the volume of directives and other proposals from Europe. Senator Colm Burke is absolutely right, so perhaps the Minister of State will have something to say on that.

I refer to some of the remarks made by those on the other side of the House. I would probably say the same if I was on that side. I know the Minister of State will not comment on all the promises and commitments made to the electorate before and subsequent to the election, on the activities in which the Government has been involved, on the quote on 5 February that it is neither morally right nor economically sustainable for taxpayers to be asked to beggar themselves to make profits for speculators, on the statement made on 9 February by the now Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, that not another cent would go to the banks and so on.

The one thing that emerged last week was not so much what was happening in Greece or the emerging Italian crisis but the fact that this Government sanctioned the payment of €700 million to junior bondholders, which was not guaranteed or secured and did not have to be paid. I appreciate there is a moral argument and I understand from where the Minister of State is coming in terms of responding to why we were obliged to pay this money but this Government will find, as the last one found, that public opinion can shift very quickly. It is very volatile.

It is in that context that I ask the Minister of State whether she agrees there is a very real crisis of leadership in the European Union. Is there a need for Ireland to take a lead in the way it did in the past among like-minded nations in Europe to try to build some sort of an alliance for the smaller nations?