well welcome to worlds apart this year marks fortune years since arlen joined the european union but you don't see much liberation here and that may be due to the fact that few have paid a higher price for this integration than the arash people each one of whom already contributed almost nine thousand tourists in taxes to effectively safeguard the euro was that worth it well to discuss that i'm now enjoying by the country's minister for european affairs pascal donahue mr donahue thank you very much for your time i know that when arlen was celebrating the thirty if thirtieth anniversary of joining the euro there was this whole program of exhibitions and conferences to solve their cation but we don't see. that level of celebration this time around and i wonder whether it is due to all this perhaps it reflects maybe

a broader more skeptical reassessment of joining the e.u. well the main reason for the change in diet mood is the scale of the economic crisis that audience house and jerked over the last five years. we have gone through a period in which our economy went through a very sharp decline we saw on employment go up to we had to deal with a very very difficult. crisis within our banking system. and because of all of dos it's understandable that people are not really in a mood to celebrate anything. because of the difficulty that many people feel. we are seeing for the first time now in five years some saw and the scale of difficulty is coming to an end we're seeing our private sector create jobs for the first time now since two thousand and eight. our economy is now i want

a third year of growth so i worked hope if you were to come back in a few more years time to look at the next face of where we stand you'll see a very big difference from where we are now well indeed hope to see a big difference couple of years from now but i think some would argue that one of the reasons why people are so skeptical about this whole european integration people in ireland i mean was because of them having to incur all that private banking doubt upon themselves and. i wonder whether you think that arlen would have been pressured then obligated to be all that banking if it wasn't a member of the e.u. citizen number of assumptions in your question i would challenge i think they're wrong the first assumption is that there is a majority of people skeptic skeptical of a number of times as it is certainly increased from saying it has increased thousand priests but that's very different from saying are inferring that the

majority of people are against our scandalous leverage or to i think know this campus is growing we were able to as an inference in your introduction as well on your question the. a majority of people are against the level of integration that we have or where we stand in our relationship with europe at the moment. that's not to say that the russian now oh for people are accepting that integration is the same that house changed over time we joined the european union as a country whose level of income was below the european average despite everything that's happened we're now at least in line with and ahead of us in some cases in terms of your specific question regarding banking desmet that's a very very controversial question in our politics let alone european politics. but i think there's a number of facts that we have to lay alongside us the first one is the. irish

decision to put in place a banking guarantee and happened at a time of global orthodoxy regarding the failing banks needed to be supported. so to see incurring bank purely as a result of our relationship our membership of the european union is an analysis that i would i would challenge absolutely the you mentioned these prevailing are for the exits and i think one country that was sort of subjected to the same sort of pressure was iceland which was a box time also on track of joining the e.u. it have massive crisis similar crisis to yours but the icelandic officials decided to defy that pressure and obviously they were also you know sometimes threatened sometimes told that nobody would ever deal with iceland again but here they decided to decline bailing out banks and nowadays if you look around

their economies back on track it's growing they're getting those loans easily unemployment this falling i mean i think it's ultimately a different country to emerge from from this crisis do you think the. irish people have the right to feel cheated because better than they were they were told that there was no other way out of this crisis but obviously there was a way a shorter way and probably last demanding way to completely different economies. is not a member of the single currency zone we are so because of all of dollars we benefit greatly from. the european union fabiano but it's completely different i mean if you look at the icelandic economy and if you look at the economy we have a very very large stock of foreign direct investment. irish investment across a huge spread of industries. we can deliver here in our lives because we are

members of the single currency zone so you would lose all of that if you decided no to no longer i didn't say to us what i did say is that our membership of the single currency zone has given us certainty of exchange rate data has allowed us to develop an export performance that is how to sustain and develop our economy that's a fundamental difference for us is it i mean are you me in many countries in europe get those same advantages without first being members of the like a european union well for example norway or iceland for example and iceland doesn't that that's wrong though iceland does not have the level of sustained acts for performance that we do but if you look at the difficulty of the icelandic banking system has went true if you look at the fact that a currency that allowed them to revalue was de soffit. their fundamental differences between

a our country and there are some of them other i don't claim that they are the same can i take it from your answer though that if your government wasn't placed back down that he would have made the same decision knowing that he would have transacted all that you can take when you get to a situation where a country is unable to fund its public services. and a country is unable to fund its banking system it doesn't have any good choices left. to attribute to us a some may do to our membership of the european union is something that i would fundamentally reject. while on the contrary it can have different relationships with the euro were the european union as you correctly say. the force the stars have allowed to get to where we are much of both parties to forces are behind the union now in terms of your particular question regarding what our government would do it would have dod i mean it's impossible as you know to look back and say. block could you have done differently with the benefit of

hindsight one of the you want to do this and that decision now and even despite the fact that it was taken by different government when did i defend this decision you know you just said that you had no better choices and i put it out to you that you actually had. a similar to the one that iceland took and i had a chance to interview the president of iceland just last month and he was indeed speaking about this prevailing european orthodoxy almost intimidation by the european officials that you absolutely have to accept all that private data and put it on to your people and they defied that that choice unfortunately you went along with that proposal and i think it's again going to take your country when you see it it's to recover from that and you've got to inferences and all dot dot are fundamentally wrong the first inference that you've got is. pressure

that you're talking about it that orthodoxy with the european in origin what you're doing with your associates in a global economic orthodoxy at all times no no you know these are all insults ethan's don't know what is abuse by some here is this it's own thing don't have the european origin if you look at what was happening in america at the time if you look at the aftermath of what happened with the lehman brothers you had central banks all over the world that made the decision to say they wouldn't let a bank fail to say that is a european decision is simply wrong if you look at the challenges that we had across the time period where we how would you treat deficit but nope that we could not found ourselves what i simply said is tough when the country gets to the point it doesn't good choice of open source and if you look at the decisions that loads of countries have made i mean you can as i said from the start you simply cannot compare iceland an ardent. but of course the real thing would be in

a few years time where we're both economy stand and i hope what you will see hoppin is that the forces of growth that are beginning to develop in qana me that they are going to accelerate in the coming years and i believe that our membership and participation in the european union has been a very strong force to happen now in order to achieve that growth that you're just alluding to some economists say that our land needs to go at least by three to four percent annually to get out of this that crisis. you'll need. bright well educated workforce but on the other hand you know our land is probably the country that faces the highest in europe i read somewhere that every six minutes one irish person leaves his country and there's been a number of status recently that show that it's not just the number the sheer number of people living but the quality of the human capital to put it crudely

because people who are living tend to have higher education they're more likely to have college degrees can you really achieve that growth so many of your best and brightest and leaving the country yes the reason for that is that we have been true just before unfortunately. we went through an experience like this in the one nine hundred eighty eighth and the one nine hundred seventy s. i left ireland myself for six years to go and work abroad. precisely because i wanted to go off to opportunities that were not available in the dock point what then happened as we have done before in our history if we created an economy and society that encouraged people to come back again of course you correctly acknowledge the fact that we have. immigration rates true our entire history but also during this part of the crisis do the part of dot of course the start we have one of the highest. rates within europe and he will probably know one of the long

term drivers of economic success is the ability of a country to be above its for placement ratio notoriously he says he's here people get really grown now i mean you have to wait twenty years to you know allow that new generation to grow up i mean literally you growth now introduce your generation has grown up i mean if you look at the year living there they're doing worth it sorry not all of them are leaving that's wrong. you only are a thousand people left since two thousand and eight that's the highest level since i believe the. previous crisis of course but alongside us the irish economy now has one of the highest levels of private sector job creation of any country within europe and we also have a large number of people abroad that are interested to come back home to ireland to see how they can accelerate that level of job creation and that level of company

and technological creation but why does unemployment down. fall saw slowly i mean as far as i understand it only went down by less than one percent if you say that there there is such a fast you know speed of creating jobs in the private sector if indeed but i think that's an amazingly. one sided interpretation to take of what's happened in ireland across the knuckle last two years because of course you're right to say the level of unemployment has come slowly to many economists are now saying down in ireland what we have achieved over the last year is doubt we have achieved growth less job creation as opposed to the other way around which is what normally happens. and we're now seeing our economy generate jobs at around three thousand new jobs per month after going to many years of losing them by eight. job problem mr donahue

really have to take a short break now but when we come back our lead has unique experience on many of the issues troubling the world today but why is it often reluctant to take a stand well that they'll be and just a few moments. to the stream of snowden related leaks no longer surprises but compazine scope of spying still even online gamers have not been spared all the while the powers that be. to remain in the end. we want to make believe what it. is it time for an international bill of rights.

welcome back to worlds apart where we are discussing our lens many gains and failures for the country minister for european affairs. mr donohue we were talking about that immigration in our land. as you said it's a very pressing issue of europe as a whole has to deal with a large broader much larger issue of incoming immigration and i'm talking about refugees from africa. the middle is some of that's related to the conflict in syria and libya and i think ireland has a very unique position here because on the one hand for decades you've been receiving country and now you are once again a country of immigrants how do you think this issue should be dealt with in the broader european context it's a hugely difficult in the. sensitive issue the three elements to how we believe the

should be handled better in the future the first one is that we have to do all we can to make sure that people are not in a position to have to leave the country and region because of the terrible violence and state that's occurring there and europe a role to play there secondly we need to ensure that if they are travelling across the seeds as many of them have been done more be drawn to ensure that as people get into terrible difficulty that they can be dealt with safely and the third element of that i do if they do go to europe and if they are legally allowed to stay and encouraged to stay we have to find a way of ensuring that this is dealt with ferdi across all of europe now in the beginning of your answer you said that people shouldn't be forced to leave their countries because of all the conflicts and i think some would argue that. the european union itself may have held or aided through its policies some of these

conflicts. how would they argue the wall let me explain that for example the conflict in libya or the conflict in syria where some of the european countries sided with the. opposition against the sovereign government but my question is a bit different i know that your country in particular has a a unique experience first with the. sectarian strife and then with conflict resolution you are more knowledgeable on that issue of than any other country country in europe but for some reason when it came to both libya and syria are led to a back seat you. essentially gave the initiative to france and the united kingdom why is arlen so passive on those issues of war and peace especially given your unique experience. your. the question base based on two premises start are

wrong again the first of promise is that the european union was involved in the policy decisions that led to some of the countries further but it's a different story there's a difference between european countries and the european union do european countries have decided not to give compton seat to european union regarding where they put their armies for this debate on the it is a very early in the land only see you can't blame the european union for using power for not using power if that doesn't half i mean you're correct to say that member members of the european union talk different stances in relations to reach israel and i am asking and i realize has never voiced either luciferian or at least will guarantee its expertise in your years but are you know that's wrong though ireland is a neutral country precisely because of our history we've decided dot.

we believe it's the right thing for our country to adopt neutral stance in conflicts that take place throughout the world but the neutral stance is not the same thing as a passive starts so if you look for example what we have to on in relation to the middle east in relation to syria. i point to three things that aren't on true its foreign policy the first one is that we have to ploy our armed forces in a neutral capacity in the golan heights to try and look after and protect people who would otherwise be vulnerable to the conflict that you've destroyed. the second one thing that we have don is that we have made contributions to the organizations that are involved in the hopeful decommissioning of chemical weapons within syria in what way and financial contributions to us and then the third thing is precise. because of the historical heritage that you are quickly identified

regarding what we hop into it's what happened in the north of ireland and what's happened within our own country we believe the best response to the kind of difficulty you're talking about is a political response i think that the if the history of your country shows that you can only achieve a political solution when you recognize the legitimacy of both sides the problem is that the european stance is of course that from the very beginning some of the hero of your european neighbors and your european partners declared one of the sides to that conflict illegitimate and some would argue that's the main reason why we haven't been able to achieve a political solution at this point but again be clear this is the stance of the european member states individually making their mind up as opposed to a a european a collective european union response and this need not be blaming the european union for the exercise of power it does not one of your favorite phrases is the

voluntary sharing of summer and your on for size common european values our full sized common european approaches so it seems to me that whenever it is convenient for your course you would stress the commonality but whenever it is it may not fit your narrative here is trans the individual is a man of the rights and then under reason of course is the first part of the concept which is voluntarily sharing this doug what you decide is data on the different elements of your national sovereignty what you would do it with contrie it's when you believe it's in the south it's in the interest of your own country when it comes to where your armed forces go and when it comes to the exercise of your foreign policy in a very sensitive matter of what islands has decided as i think is the case for most of the member states that we believe that's an area. of national competence and

it's precisely because of the heritage of history and history that we have a dialogue complete school supplement that we have said we believe that's the right option to be taken within the reach of state you're discussing just recently irish prime minister said that to make our land the first country to the european bailout program as far as i understand one of the crucial elements of this successful absent strategy is breaking this link between public and private debt and. i know that the european security mechanism was created at least partially for that very purpose to deal with the banks and to. allow taxpayers to be concerned with the public debt now we're heard recently both from the e.c.b. officials and the yes some officials that they don't want to deal with the banks

that if the. task that is going to take place over the next year reveals that the capital is ation of the irish banks is good enough you know it should be left to the irish taxpayers to deal with that again even though they've been promised time and time again that they should be carrying the burden any longer. don't you think that these two concepts at all it's a video concept of volunteering sharing of sovereignty because first it's not voluntary irish people no longer want to continue caring for that for the banks and first second of all there is no sharing i mean when it comes to relying on some european structures to relieve that pain europeans now say that you know ira should deal with those problems simply because those were irish europeans are not really new i mean that's a diversity of view in relation to this. those opinions are being voiced context

but up was not me it's the europeans are saying that the decision of the european union i mean there are two different things if you look there are in relation to her negotiations stand on the banking union the european council that the european stability mechanism should be able to play a role in the directory of banking systems now all. you have to acknowledge that there is an awful lot of debate taking place regarding. broke and how tightening should be broken members of political elite hearing. and some members of the public i think they would argue that you didn't have to encourage that in the first place and my question to you is whether you are confident that the irish taxpayers won't be asked to carry that burden as long and input into a question to me we can acknowledge the value judgment that's been made in relation to this that history will be able to tell if it's correct because what we can do is

correctly acknowledge dot the irish tough pay are paid far too high a cost for supporting the banking system now in relation to your question regarding the future what we hope is that what we want and we will press for is for the e.u. . been an option for our country in dealing with this left this banking death but what i would have to say is we want this to be one of a number of options that we want to open to our government on the tax payers in the future can i just clarify you mentioned b. if sam has a mechanism yes so if for some reason the decides not to deal with the irish banks i confident that the irish taxpayers won't be asked again to hear how this break up till is that banks we need to bring these conclusions to an end in the first place. but if you look at what is happening there at the moment if you look at the arrangements that are already in place for example requiring bondholders to

be bailed in to support the cost of a national banking system. i can't i'm certain that in the future the cost to any tax payer is going to be lower than it has been in the past so there's no believe yes and no no because i mean not everybody has the veterans coming to tell us i think people who says want to know when it's going to sign up i'm sure of the worst but the research. center of course the reason for that is that we're involved in a negotiation at the moment and you are of all ask me to comment on something to opposition. for them that the irish people won't be asked a guarantee a step in and pick up the bail will be here for the private banks what respect i never said to us what i was i'm saying it's doubt in the context of a fully functioning banking union that we want to see open next year which will be a european banking union if it's in place the cost to national taxpayers regardless

of whether their irish are not should be far smaller than it has been in the past and dot's why we are pursuing despite kenyan but you know what i'm conscious of all of this that at the end of any crisis that ever happens for the be bunking our economic again what always happens as a regulator the central bank or the politicians they say this will never ever happen again and it keeps on happening but we have to ensure is that if this to happen again it doesn't how is such a casa klyce make an awful cost for taxpayers mr donohue thank you very much for you very much and if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on the the world .

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an e.u. commissioner tweets that integration talks with ukraine have been put on hold but kiev wants official confirmation. of pro and anti-government protesters on the streets of the ukrainian capital. the american people would want. to support the people of ukraine. and u.s. senator john mccain joins other american and the politicians who are putting their full support behind the ukrainian opposition. also this week syria is shaken by another wave of atrocities islamist rebel forces a massive dozens of civilians in the latest series of attacks. and bizarre than this three year long.