Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-01-16-Speech-3-021-000"
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"en.20130116.4.3-021-000"2
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"Mr President, I wish to welcome the Taoiseach and Minister Creighton, to thank them for the programme they have set out here this morning and to congratulate the Irish Presidency for the thorough preparations that have been made.
I would like to make three points. One is about use of language. I think the language we use is important. There are many people in this House who play politics with people’s pain. They use phrases like ‘austerity does not work’, as if you plant the seed today and you wake up in the morning saying ‘where is the bush?’.
We all know that it takes time. Nobody more than Ireland knows that it takes time. What happened in three general elections we had in 1981 and 1982, right up to 1987, when we could not get the public finances under control, was that there was unemployment. When we got our public finances under control from 1987 onwards, with the support of Fine Gael from opposition to a minority Fianna Fáil Government, the Celtic Tiger years followed.
You are right, Taoiseach. Start changing the language. Talk about growth, jobs and stability and hope. And above all, in Europe and also in Ireland, talk about solidarity. There is plenty to go around. Ireland is not a poor country. Europe is not a poor continent. It is time we shared things out a bit and helped people through the difficult times that they are facing.
The second thing I want to say is that we should take stock in Europe. In all this doom and gloom, saying that it is a terrible place and that the whole place is falling down around us, have we forgotten where we came from? There were two world wars in the first half of the last century and 60 million Europeans killed each other. Then in recent times the unthinkable, the miraculous happened: the Berlin Wall came down and we brought ten Member States into the European Union. Then they threw the worst financial crisis since the 1930s at us and we are managing it.
But I want to say one thing to the Taoiseach, if I may, coming back to what he said about Africa. This is a changing world. There will be two billion more people within a generation, 90% of them born into what is now the developing world. We will be six per cent of the world’s population. 26 000 children are dying every day. Please look out especially for the humanitarian aid budget and the development budget in the multiannual financial framework."@en1
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