Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State as I always look forward to his visits here. As noted, this is a moment of crisis. We were bounced into the bank rescues, which brings us back to the design faults in the euro in the first instance, with no banking regulation, exit mechanism or anything to protect small countries like us from tsunamis of credit from large countries like Germany, and the one size fits all interest rate policy. Fiscal transfers and fiscal federalism were not enough. I wonder if, despite the best efforts of our Minister, we are getting any closer to the solution.

A German court in Karlsruhe last Thursday asked German President Gauck not to sign the legislation for a permanent bailout until judges ruled on several constitutional complaints likely to be filed as early as next week. A report in The Irish Times notes that eight countries besides Germany have yet to ratify the legislation. There is the list of countries in serious difficulty, including Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Cyprus. How long can we continue to hold this show together? Did we confuse the European currency - the euro - with the European ideal that Senator D'Arcy spoke about? Was it a step too far and has it created more problems than it solved? As has been noted, it certainly has for this country, as we were put on the front line to defend the banking system and bounced into saving outfits like Anglo Irish Bank. One doubts, in rational discussion, if anybody would have recommended such action, and it is a pity we did not have a chance to explain to our German colleagues that the bank really was not worth saving or any good to us. It was not worth saving and would not have done much good for us. I do not know in what direction the future of Europe will go. Of the northern countries with which Germany compares itself, Norway, Sweden and Denmark did not join and it is likely that Finland might leave along with Switzerland right next door. How far Germany is willing to go to pay for this operation has to be dealt with and we await what the constitutional court says. Chancellor Merkel has been heavily criticised but what she says makes a great deal of sense to people in Germany. The worry is that despite so much effort being expended and so many summits - the Taoiseach must attend another at the end of the week - Europe is not able to resolve the underlying design faults in the euro. While most of us were not in the House at the time, on joining the euro, we should have debated these issues and perhaps some of the problems we have encountered might have been foreseen. I wish the Minister of State well in his efforts and I acknowledge his request for support from all sides of the House. I agree with Senator O'Brien on that as well.

Ireland is required to put in €254 million but we do not have it. That is our problem. If we had €254 million, many Members would be delighted. Is it a design fault that countries that have been rescued are being asked to contribute to their own rescue?

Political union is seen as the solution, particularly by Germany, but that will raise problems in many countries. Fiscal union raises problems for us because we want to preserve our low corporation tax rate but Germany does not want monetary union until a political union is in progress. We have an ongoing crisis and I wish the Minister of State and the Minister for Finance the best of luck in trying to deal with it but we are in such choppy waters that it is distracting from long-term discussions about where Europe should be and what kind of Europe people want. It is difficult to see when we are dealing with a failed European project, that is, the currency, how more fiscal and political union is the answer when we are trying to absorb the consequences of a failed policy.

Going back to day 1 in case anything like that ever happens again, we should have put the bankers who arrived at 8 p.m. at the Department of Finance on the planes to Frankfurt and Brussels. We did our country a great deal of harm and Europe a fair amount of good, as Senator D'Arcy said, by taking on that burden ourselves but we have borne it for the best part of four years and it has held the country back. The next time round we will have to know which problems are domestic and which are European to distinguish between the two. We also will have to have a plan B if the eurozone breaks up because many people outside the continent think it will not survive and that is the message the markets are sending. The German Government is paying others to take their bonds while other countries are being charged 6% or 7% to have their bonds purchased. The markets, therefore, have decided that the German way of running public finances does not extend throughout the eurozone and, until that is resolved, a heavy penalty will be paid by countries in deficit, of which we are one through no fault of our own.

I wish the Minister of State success in dealing with this dilemma which is the major reason the composition of the both Houses of the Oireachtas changed so much following the last election. We have inherited this problem and we all have to work together to find a solution.