Dr. Gavin Barrett:

All of these things help. Senator Burke has a unique perspective as he has been in the European Parliament as well as the Oireachtas. There are major problems. There are different electoral cycles. Many European initiatives take years to come to fruition, so that if a submission is made here, no political payback is seen. The Senator's story about the directive reminded me of a relative of mine getting a letter from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine about the nitrates directive, telling him exactly how many cubic centimetres of nitrates his cows were permitted to produce. That is a facetious story at one level, but it is important all the same because it reminds us that many of our problems with the implementation of directives come down to their implementation within the country. If that was done in a better way, perhaps we would have fewer problems. If the Oireachtas did a better job in controlling statutory instruments, then perhaps the kinds of difficulty the Senator was talking about would not have arisen, because a better job would have been done on controlling their implementation in the first place. I suspect the Seanad could do some work in that respect. That leads on to the next question. What can we do with the Seanad? Deputy Byrne raised that issue as well. The Seanad could be given a role on some of the jobs I have identified. For instance, if it is not possible for Deputies to find the time to police the implementation of European Union law, or if it is not worth their while because it is not electorally fruitful for them, perhaps it could be farmed over to the Seanad. It would be better to have the Seanad doing this than nobody doing it at all, no matter how democratic or undemocratic we feel it is. We have a glorious opportunity as there is huge pressure at the moment to reform the Seanad. There is also a great amount of work to be done in the European Union field. There is work to be done and reforms are needed, so perhaps we could make them join up and give the Seanad a better role. Let us give the Seanad what the committees do not want to do at the end of the day. If they do not want to supervise statutory instruments, that function can be given to the Seanad. If they do not want to hear Ministers before and after Council meetings, that function could be given to the Seanad. If they do not want to do the subsidiarity control mechanism, the Seanad could be given a bigger role in it, although that is slightly different in that both Houses have to be involved. A committee such as this could do an enormous amount of good by coming up with a report on how we can use the Seanad. We should get everybody who was involved in the Seanad debate, such as Michael McDowell, Senator Zappone and so many-----