Speaking this morning in Clonmel, Deputy Joan Burton highlighted the key challenges facing the country in the coming weeks.

The publication yesterday of the official NAMA legislation emphasises just how much our economy has faltered. Our banking system has been brought to its knees by the Gordon Gecko-type greed and rampant speculation of our bankers and our developers.

Together with Fianna Fáil, they make up a ‘toxic triangle’ that has damaged and destroyed our economy, sending Ireland into the deepest, and maybe even the longest, economic depression of any advanced economy since the second World War. Together, they have shattered the confidence of a nation.

Fianna Fáil does not have a mandate to inflict pain on the ordinary people of Ireland to clean up a mess of their own creation.

There are critical challenges ahead for the country. We need to rebuild our economy at home and restore our battered reputation abroad.

The most immediate threat to our domestic economy is the stymied flow of credit that is putting viable businesses at risk and making it difficult for credit-worthy families to borrow to buy the homes and cars they need. Only when we have restored the flow of credit can we address the other pressing economic challenges: the jobs crisis and the fiscal crisis.

To get credit flowing, we need to clean out the banks’ balance sheets. Everybody is agreed on that. The challenge is to do this at least cost and at least risk to the taxpayer. Fianna Fáil has concocted NAMA to pump capital into the banks through the back door by paying way over the odds, billions over the odds in fact, to take over their dodgy assets.

At this stage of the game, and with the disastrous bank guarantee still in place, there is no cost-free, risk-free way to restore our banking sector to the extent necessary so that it can support economic recovery. The Labour Party is opposed to Fianna Fáil’s NAMA bank bailout. Instead, we propose taking the banks into temporary public ownership, cleaning them up and returning them to a private sector governed by robust regulation. This, we believe, is the safest approach. By giving taxpayers’ ownership of the banks, they will have a direct stake in their success and could potentially reap a profit when they are returned to the private sector.

Back in February of this year, the Labour Party proposed the establishment of an independent Banking Commission to oversee the restructuring and restoration of our banking sector. By putting the banks at arms-length from politicians, valid concerns about political interference in banks’ operations can be addressed. This is the mechanism we propose for overseeing bank nationalisation while ensuring the banks’ can act commercially and independently, but under close supervision. The mistakes of the past must not be repeated.

For the past year, the Irish banking system has been on ECB life-support, borrowing tens of billions from Frankfurt, proportionally far more than any other EU country. If it were not for the finance facilities provided by the ECB and the solidarity of our EU partners, Ireland would be in a much more difficult position. The European Union is a safety blanket that we discard at our peril.

A No to Lisbon at this point in time would send out a host of wrong signals about an Ireland that is not only mired in economic difficulty, but is distancing itself from Europe.

The Labour Party believes that it is only by working with Europe that we can solve the severe economic challenges we face domestically.

I will be voting YES to Lisbon on October 2nd, and personally recommending to women and men across the country to do the same.

I have no doubt that as voters go to the polls this time, they will be primarily trying to make a decision on how to vote based on the best interests of themselves, their families and their children.

Now is not the time for Ireland to become isolationist and retreat from Europe. The Lisbon referendum allows us to reaffirm our commitment to Europe and to European solidarity that in the past has assisted Ireland significantly and is doing so again now through the European Central Bank, at a time of unprecedented economic turmoil.

At this time of economic crisis, voting YES to retain our position as a core member of the European Union makes good economic sense.

The Lisbon Treaty, in particular the Charter of Fundamental Rights, has enormous possibilities for improving access and provision of fundamental public services like health and education.

While these are matters for actual implementation for the governments of each country, nonetheless, including these in the charter would positively enhance the commitment of Labour, if elected to government by the people, to improve these areas.

Many Irish people abroad have rightly marvelled at the level of health provision and other public services in France, Holland and Scandinavia. Positive commitment to the EU by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty will allow Ireland to take these progressive countries and their health systems as positive templates for Ireland.

One of the greatest global challenges, and one of the great human tragedies currently afflicting Europe, is people trafficking. Many thousands of women and children are trafficked into and around Europe every year against their will. Almost by definition, this needs a response based on cooperation between nations. Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty will not only explicitly prohibit trafficking – in the Charter – but will facilitate greater cooperation between police forces across the Union, allowing them step up the fight against people traffickers