MEMBERS of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs have called for the establishment of a forum for public debate on the merits of Ireland's joining the European single currency.
During a discussion on a recently published report on the European Union, the committee chairman, Mr Michael Ferris (Labour), said the lack of such a forum was obvious. On radio and television programmes, he said, many people were asking questions about the effect of joining the single currency, and these matters should be fully debated.
He believed that in making recommendations to the Taoiseach arising from its consideration of the report, the committee should propose such a forum.
Mr Desmond O'Malley (Progressive Democrats) said the weakness of the report, from the National Economic and Social Council, was that it said it reflected Government thinking.
Official thinking was that Ireland should "plough on regardless" towards the single currency.
"It is wrong that we should get reports that are so full of enthusiasm that they don't let the public know that there are huge pitfalls," he said. While the NESC was full of very fine people", there were no major exporters involved in it and nobody from the Central Bank involved in producing the report.
Exporters `with hundreds of millions of pounds at stake in the export market" were among those who saw that joining the single currency without Britain would bring problems. We were looking at the issue at the moment through rose tinted glasses because of the position of the pound against sterling.
"But my great fear is that if we are locked into a hard currency and the British are free to do whatever they like, we could find ourselves in a situation where our currency is much stronger than sterling," thus seriously damaging Ireland's export trade.
While many Irish institutions favoured joining even if Britain does not, there were many voices expressing concern about the implications of this course, according to Fine Gael's Ms Mary Flaherty.
Mr John Browne (Fine Gael) said people were anxious about the single currency and its implications, and it was important for the issue to be discussed in public.
Mr Andrew Boylan (Fine Gael) called for a public debate on how Ireland should apply for structural and cohesion funds in future. Up to now Ireland has been designated as a single region when applying for such funds.
Now that Irish GDP has grown to close to the EU average, Ireland would likely lose much of its funding because it can no longer be classified as underdeveloped. Representatives from the west and the Border region argue the State should be divided into several regions for the purpose of applying for EU funds, so that at least some regions will be categorised as underdeveloped.
The Border areas from Donegal to Louth had not benefited as much from such funding as the east and southeast, Mr Boylan said.