Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the ambassadors for attending the committee. I am a member of a committee that will be going to Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn on Saturday. I agree with other members on building relationships. As smaller member states, it is important we rally together on issues we have in common.

I bow to my colleague’s superior knowledge on underground cabling. This morning the Seanad had a debate on EU scrutiny. What systems are operated in the Latvian and Estonian Parliaments to scrutinise EU legislation? What became obvious from the Seanad debate this morning was that we do not do enough to scrutinise EU legislation here. There is an argument that one should be careful what one wishes for as the detail can be quite exhausting.

At last week’s committee, there was some discussion on the French lobbying the Council for a digital tax or a Google tax. Has this arisen with the Latvian and Estonian authorities? Ireland would see this as negative as we have so many of the key players in the technology space.

The Irish electorate seems to be somewhat disengaged from the EU and its processes at all levels. I am doing a survey on how many people know their local MEP. With the European Parliament elections coming up, what has been voter turn-out like for previous elections in Latvia and Estonia?

Obviously, they take place here at the same time and in conjunction with our local elections. I do not know if the same approach is taken in our guests' countries in order try to boost turnout. I thank them for coming before us today.