Big Brother is watching us now more than ever but the question is, should we taxpayers be grateful that there is a higher power keeping an eye on the people who brought the country to where it is today?
We heard earlier this week that the European Commission has proposed that Eurozone countries submit their national budgets to the EU for 'peer review' before they go to national parliaments. Basically this means that the EU will now get to approve our budget each year before it gets public airing.
It is hard to know whether or not this is a good or a bad thing. It would seem that maybe it is a positive move in the current climate. If this had been happening before now - maybe the EU would have capped the massive spending spree that the Government indulged in up until the downturn. It would almost certainly have been spotted by EU financiers who are clued in to this type of activity, and maybe our Government might not have been so flathuilach with our cash if they knew that there would be a greater power examining their books so to speak.
The other side of the coin however, is the fear that we are handing another piece of our autonomy over to Europe. Fine Gael has raised this issue and Fianna Fail ministers have dismissed their concerns as unfounded, unhelpful in the bid to attract foreign investment to Ireland and anti-European.
However, we as citizens have to look at both sides of the story and try to decipher what is for the common good of all who live in this country. I think it is already evident that Europe has been good to Ireland in more ways than one. We benefited from hundreds of European subsidies in the past, particularly in the area of farming, and Europe helped to pull this country out of recession back in the eighties. Currently we are benefiting from the European Monetary Fund as our country is in so much debt. Of course the other side is that we are also obliged to help Greece out with its massive debt and that is a disadvantage. However, in the greater scheme of things I think that Europe has been good to this country. If they act as a watchdog for our accounts and budget maybe our grandchildren won’t find themselves in this mess in 20 years time.
Our corporation tax is definitely an attraction to global investors and one would hope that Europe would continue to realise that and leave well enough alone. However, being part of a ‘united state’ as such is going to have advantages and disadvantages. All in all we have seen more benefits than drawbacks from Europe. We do have to have a certain amount of trust in Europe. We have signed up to it and we haven’t done too badly to date. We would be in a much worse situation if it weren’t for Europe at this time, and so we have to be sensible. Our Government messed up. It lacked vision and got carried away on a wave of success. A watchdog society is the consequence of the flippant actions and we are just going to have to accept that.
