Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 7 Nov 1972

Vol. 263 No. 5

Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - EEC Finance Ministers' Meeting.

41.

asked the Minister for Finance if he will make a statement regarding his recent meeting in Luxembourg with the Finance Ministers of the other countries of the enlarged EEC.

The primary purpose of the meeting at Luxembourg on the 30th and 31st October was to consider measures to combat inflation. During the two-day meeting there was a wide-ranging discussion of the problem as it affects each of the nine countries concerned and agreement was reached on the terms of an EEC Council resolution designed to provide remedies. I am arranging to have a copy of the resolution placed in the Dáil Library.

The resolution provides for anti-inflation action under various heads, principally related to the moderation of the growth of prices, incomes, and the money supply. As agreed, the resolution applies only to the existing six EEC member countries. However, the three acceding countries, including Ireland, have agreed to the objectives in mind, subject to the needs of their own economies.

On Ireland's behalf, I fully welcomed the Community's initiative which is in our immediate interest as a country currently experiencing the highest rate of inflation of the nine. The resolution gives us valuable guidlines for the fight against inflation.

Has the Minister any confidence at all that this meeting of the Finance Ministers will prove any more successful than the meeting in Washington 12 months ago and the meeting in Brussels in February? Has the Minister any genuine confidence that it will be any more effective than these abortive meetings?

On the whole, the meeting in Washington was very successful and, I think, without it we would all be in considerably greater difficulty than we are today. I should not like to suggest that the meeting in Luxembourg has provided the panacea for inflation within the Community of Six or Nine; it has assisted to some degree in providing some guidelines and it has assisted in clarifying matters which it may not now be thought realistic to pursue.

Top
Share