Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. It is a genuine pleasure when she attends the House to discuss the European project. I applaud her work in that regard. I welcome the Taoiseach's award as the European Person of the Year. What distinguishes him from the other Europeans in the competition is that he is not a waffler. In comparison, Brussels and Frankfurt are filled to the roof with waffle, complacency and non-performance. I hope that a signature of our Presidency will be to wake up the EU's bureaucracy, which is not serving citizens. It issues communiques at 3 a.m. while there is a 50% rate of youth unemployment in Spain and Greece. Shaking the EU out of its slumber, complacency and cliches should be the Irish Presidency's goal.

I agree with Senator Landy, in that we should have less grandstanding. Commissioner Van Rompuy and his colleagues have failed miserably the Continent that they are supposed to serve. It needs the breath of fresh air that the Taoiseach has brought to Ireland. I hope he will bring it to Europe. Europe is not working. The currency has been a disaster and restoring confidence in it will be impossible unless its design faults are tackled immediately.

The indifference of Brussels, in particular, to the amount of misery it has caused up and down this continent is bizarre to behold, and there is a major democratic deficit. They are all out of touch with reality. There have been 25 summits, with press releases at 3 a.m. filled with obfuscation. Some of the people ought to get real and see what has been happening in the real world. A successful free trade area has been turned into an extra layer of bureaucracy, many air miles and not much else in results.

I will refer to some of the issues mentioned by the Minister of State. I agree that we need more democratic engagement. Some of the leaders in Europe would not be elected to a county council because they are so unpopular and out of touch with reality. We must deliver results for European citizens and restore trust in the euro area, which was designed badly, and very little has been done to repair the damage. The Minister of State indicated that more needs to be done and I agree absolutely with that point. She pointed out that there is vital work being done in examining the position of the Irish financial sector, which has been broken for four years because we were not protected against the tsunami of bad debts. That was because the euro was badly designed. We should have put those mendicant bankers on the plane back to Frankfurt on 29 September 2008.

We must break the connection between banking and sovereign debt. There is very little democratic legitimacy and accountability in Brussels, which is one of the problems mentioned by the Minister of State. She also mentioned 70 pieces of implementing legislation with regard to the multi-annual financial framework but that is part of the problem. We never seem to get to grips with the issue because we get more bureaucracy and pieces of legislation. There is 50% youth unemployment in some countries and 25% total unemployment in some others. I gather Brussels wants a 4.8% increase in its budget but it is very difficult to defend that, given how it has been asleep at the wheel during these crises.

With regard to skills, ¤1 billion was put into FÁS annually when there was 4% unemployment, or full employment. Separately, Portugal got vast amounts of money for its infrastructure. Brussels needs a council of economic advisers to ensure its policies are more than aspirations. There should be some measurement of results, and Europe is very bad at doing it. The Minister of State has indicated we will play a crucial role in developing EU-US trade relations in Dublin in April. We are strategically placed because of our contacts with the United States and Europe to perform a very important role, and I wish the Minister of State every success in that regard.

We need a different kind of European Union as the current version has failed its citizens. It is up to us to change it during our Presidency and I hope the Taoiseach and the Minister of State will be the vanguard of that process.