Taoiseach defends meetings between Merkel and Sarkozy

IT WAS perfectly in order for the German and French leaders to meet to discuss the European economic crisis, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said.

He said he expected to go to Germany to provide an update on the progress Ireland was making, and he also expected to meet the French president when it was appropriate.

“Both countries are enormously influential,” said Mr Kenny. “Germany, in particular, sets the base rate here.”

The Taoiseach was replying to Shane Ross (Ind), who asked if he was satisfied that French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel should be “meeting and posing as spokespersons for Europe on a continual basis”.

He also asked if Mr Kenny was happy to be “an impotent spectator” in the European solution to the economic crisis, while others in similar positions were posing as “the leaders of Europe”.

Mr Kenny said neither he nor the Government would be “a spectator, standing idly by while all this happens, as somebody more famous than me said one time”.

The IMF, he added, was perfectly entitled to make its proposals. “It has been very considerate of propositions put forward by our Minister for Finance in respect of the renegotiation of elements of the memorandum of understanding,” he said.

Mr Kenny said that for the first time a measure of economic sovereignty had been removed from the Dáil. “We are not in a position to determine all the things we would like to do now,” he said.

“If we comply with the conditions of the bailout deal and get back to borrowing in the bond markets, the Government will be able to work with the people to determine our future as a country.”

Mr Kenny also said the IMF was entitled to make known its views on Europe’s future.

The Lisbon Treaty had been signed off on, and he did not see any prospect of further treaties ahead. “We have to work together,” he added. The Government, he said, would continue to put forward propositions at Ecofin (the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Council) and EU leaders’ meetings, not just based on the narrow individual interests of Ireland but also on the interests of Europe.