Ms Billie Sparks:

Dealing with Deputy Byrne's three points, on the DG's consultations, this is the third time this point has appeared in our accountability report and we have been talking to Commission representatives in Dublin about it. They were very interested and have taken that on board with a view to taking it further because they see it as a block and if it is easy to remedy they will consider it from a different perspective.

We are aware of the scrutiny work and mainstreaming done by this committee. We read the report by the committee for the purposes of our 2012 accountability report. It covered only the first five months of 2012 so we have not included the data in our report because we did not feel it gave an overall picture. We are aware of the work the committee is doing and the mainstreaming process is working well in terms of scrutiny from what we gathered from the report.

Working in European affairs we constantly battle with the number of and confusion about the different European institutions. For the purposes of what we do with the primary schools, the Blue Star programme focuses on four main areas: the history of the EU, its geography, the cultural and creative aspects of the Union and, for older classes, its institutions. We do not get into the level of detail as outlined in the accountability report here. The younger classes might learn the flags of the different European countries while we encourage the Blue Star schools to have a celebration on Europe day, where they bring in food from different countries. It is informal learning about the EU.