'Weeks' left to save euro - Martin

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said he believes there may be just weeks to save the euro and he called for a “very clear” Government statement on its position in relation to the crisis.

Mr Martin said treaty change was not going to deal with the matter, because such change could take anything from a year to three years.

Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, Mr Martin said yesterday's meeting between Taoiseach Enda Kenny and German chancellor Angela Merkel had been the first such substantive bilateral meeting he had had with any leader of a euro zone country.

Mr Martin said the Government had until now “sat on the sidelines” at European summits and had not circulated any proposals in relation to bondholders, or broadening the mandate of the ECB.

He said he had consistently raise the issue in the Dáil and asked the Taoiseach to set out the Government’s position in relation to the euro zone crisis, and in relation to proposals emanating from Ms Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy on treaty change.

He had also asked Mr Kenny to convene a meeting of party leaders with a view to consensus in the Dáil in relation to the crisis so that the Taoiseach would have a broader Oireachtas mandate in future negotiations.

Two weeks ago the Taoiseach had hailed the last summit as “a major success” and had expressed confidence that it would provide a pathway out of the crisis, Mr Martin said.

“We now know, of course that that confidence was misplaced and the last summit and the recommendations or proposals that emanated from it unravelled very quickly.”

Mr Martin said he believed there were only “weeks” left to save the euro. There was not time to see treaty change as the route to resolution of the current “very severe and serious” crisis affecting the euro zone.

He said the German position had been “a fundamental problem” and that Germany and France had been allowed to take “centre stage” in recent months.

This was a situation which was “injurious” to the future of the European Union, he said.

Mr Martin said his party had put forward proposals suggesting that the mandate of the European Central Bank be changed. “We should try to do what we can in the coming weeks to utilise the existing treaties to maximise the capacity of the ECB as a lender of last resort to deal with the crisis,” he said.