Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House and echo the Leas-Chathaoirleach's condolences to him at this sad time for him and his family.

Yesterday there was support in the House for the Minister's efforts on the promissory notes and I hope that reassures him and Governor Honohan. I welcome the 10,000 jobs the Minister mentioned in his speech. It is a sign that we are turning the corner and we did so because we have an export to GDP ratio of 100%. My misgiving about the Bill is that Greece is down at 25% and I cannot see how it can recover from the kind of measures before the House today. As has been referred to, we will see a Greek repayment of €52.9 billion, scheduled for between 2020 and 2026 as outlined in the annexe to the Bill. However, it is a small country that has a low ratio of exports to GDP. How do we get more Greek wine on our shelves and persuade people from northern Europe to holiday there?

The policy instrument that Greece needs is an exchange rate but that is a step too far. Greece is locked into the fixed exchange rate regime of the euro even though it has faults. We are not helping Greece today. I accept that the Minister wishes to show solidarity with it but does solidarity depend on a fixed exchange rate? I would argue that it does not. Some EU countries, such as Sweden and the UK, do not use the euro. There is a Swedish delegation visiting us at present. Relations between the two parts of Ireland have never been better thanks to the efforts of the Government and its predecessor and different exchange rates operate in both jurisdictions. We have hung ourselves up on the euro and missed out on the misery that adherence to a rigid exchange rate regime brought to Greece, in particular. The revival of the Greek economy - and I share that goal with the Minister - is not served by imposing a huge repayments burden and not addressing the euro's design faults that have been referred to in the House. The absence of an exit mechanism and for fiscal transfers are not enough to make up for differences in competitiveness, a one size fits all interest policy, and a lack of protection for small countries. The latter happened to Ireland because a tsunami of credit came from Germany and France that destroyed our banking system and undermined public finances.

Devaluation changes one price. We have had some success with an internal devaluation to change all prices because of our large export sector which the Minister referred to. The same cannot happen in Greece because of its small export sector. We do not have a single labour market. The theory is that Greek people should migrate to Germany and Irish people should migrate to Germany but we are more likely to leave the EU altogether. Irish people are queuing outside the Australian, Canadian and United States embassies. They are not queueing outside EU embassies.

After this crisis we must address the huge design faults in the euro that people like Milton Friedman drew attention to when the euro was put together. There is a certain irony that the gentleman who signed the first annexe was a legal adviser in the areas of justice, transparency and human rights. Many Greek people would feel their human rights have been infringed for the euro currency's goal. It was said of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the past that he crucified the UK economy on the cross of gold. Frankfurt must be asked how far a single currency can be pushed with such design faults while imposing misery on Greece with Portugal and Spain to follow. This has to be introduced into the wider debate.

I thank the Minister for Finance for his contribution. However, there must be alternatives to every economic policy. The current euro one has been pursued relentlessly by the European Central Bank, ECB, and Germany without regard to what is happening to the peripheral countries. Accordingly, a contrary view must be stated and noted on occasion.