Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will start by asking a few questions and making a few comments. As the Minister of State will be aware, we attended the COSAC plenary session in Vilnius two weeks ago.

His absence was noted. He would have enjoyed the conversation, which was excellent. We spok a little about enlargement and the subject of Turkey came up again. There was a meeting last Monday week, 5 November, on accession. Could the Minister of State let us know how that went or what the outcome of it was? We talked about eastern partnerships, in particular in terms of Ukraine. We had a presentation from Pat Cox, who is one of the special rapporteurs for the European Parliament in the region. He explained the issues in terms of the current state of play and the hope that we will be able to enter an agreement in the near future, depending of course on what happens with Tymoshenko. Could the Minister of State give us an update on the position in that regard as well?

Reference was made to the annual growth survey which was published yesterday. Does the Government have a view on how we deal with the European semester? The annual growth survey will be covered by the committee and we have asked Catherine Day in to discuss the issue with us. She has agree to come in early February. It will also fall to this committee to consider the draft national reform programme, but then the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform will examine the draft stability programme. I am not sure which of us, or whether it will be both, will examine the country-specific recommendations and it is also unclear which committee will attend the Article 13 conferences. Does the Minister of State or the Government have a view on how we should proceed at an Oireachtas level with the implementation of the European semester?

The Minister of State mentioned the visit of Barbara Nolan from the Commission. We had a very fruitful discussion with her early this week. One of the questions we asked her was about Barroso’s State of the Union Address, the progress he is making with the proposals on EMU and political union, and what we would expect to see prior to the European elections. Does the Minister of State have any thoughts in that regard?

As the Minister of State is aware, the Commission published a document on trying to include social indicators within the semester process. In the coming weeks the committee will debate the type of indicators that should be included. We have a number of meetings set up with organisations such as Social Justice Ireland, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed and various other groups to talk about the type of indicators we need to see. The proposal as it stands is that we would have such indicators as long-term rates of unemployment and disposable income in households. To what use does the Minister of State think we could put the social indicators and how could they be used in practice?

The other matter on which I wish to comment is subsidiarity and the work being done by the Dutch Parliament. We had visitors from the Netherlands yesterday to discuss preparation for the Presidency and lessons learned from the Irish Presidency but we also took the opportunity to discuss issues such as subsidiarity. We noted the fact that in recent weeks the number of reasoned opinions from the Oireachtas has gone from two to four. We spoke about green cards, their views on democratic legitimacy and how we can improve it across the Union through the involvement of national parliaments. It will be interesting to hear the Minister of State’s views on subsidiarity in the context of the paper produced by the Netherlands.

The only other point which I wish to briefly mention before anyone else comments relates to the European Council meeting in December. The Minister of State will be aware that we talked in the past about bringing in contractual arrangements and associated solidarity mechanisms within the new budgetary processes. What is the progress in that regard and what is the current state of play in terms of thinking on it? That is all I have to say.