Brian Hayes: More contrarian views needed on policy

More contrarian people "questioning everything we do" are required to criticise our policymaking decisions, Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes told the MacGill Summer School.

Speaking at sessions on Brexit and on European reform on Wednesday, Mr Hayes said that Irish people, having gone through the crisis and having seen the scale of devastation it caused, would want more outside agencies to make critical remarks about our decisions.

They would want people from other agencies to ask us whether we were hitting international best practice here.

“We need lots of contrarian people, with lots of contrarian views, questioning everything we do, because that didn’t happen in the madness years.

“Any time anyone questioned something, they were told to go off and commit suicide as was famously remarked by a former Irish taoiseach [Bertie Ahern],” he said.

Mr Hayes said he believed that the proposed referendum in the UK on Europe may help to define a new relationship with Europe.

Any deal would involve an honest stocktaking exercise of what has and hasn’t worked within the single market to date. It would also involve a demand that those countries that were not members of the euro zone be involved more, especially where decisions affected them.

It would also probably require a final acceptance that the EU today was permanently two-speed.

‘Trade bloc’

Scotland's minister for Europe and international development, Humza Yousaf, said that for all those who believed in what the EU stands for and who wanted the UK to remain a strong member, there was "no use in burying our heads in the sand".

"The Scottish government intends to approach the referendum in a positive and constructive manner. We'll use it as an opportunity to inform the debate with the facts that demonstrate why membership of Europe is in Scotland, and the UK's, best interest."

UK Independence Party MP Douglas Carswell said many people in Britain now believed being in the EU meant a loss of self-government and a loss of prosperity.

At a time when there was a lot of growth, Britain had managed to lock itself into the world’s “only declining trade bloc”.

“And if we’re not careful we will be in a political union with an organisation whose response, I think, has been pretty hopeless. If you doubt me for a moment just consider how EU officials spent the past six years dealing with the Greek crisis.”

Mr Carswell said there was something “existentially flawed about the EU’s political economy”.

“It is politically incapable of addressing the challenges that it needs to tackle.”

Mr Carswell said he and others in the UK who wanted to leave the European Union were in favour of international co-operation.

“I think we need to look very carefully at the good things that exist in the status quo, that they’re not changed, and that we do nothing to undermine progress that’s already been made.