Mr. Graham Butler:

I thank the Chairman and the members of the committee for their invitation to address the committee today. I have distributed my paper, which is quite extensive. I will speak to it rather than read it in full. I listened carefully yesterday to some of the comments by Mr. Noel Dorr and Professor Ben Tonra and today to Mr. Staunton. I hope their comments and mine will form part of the committee’s submission to the review to be submitted in three weeks’ time.

The three speakers before me have gone through the different elements of foreign policy on a broad spectrum. I will focus on one issue, the parliamentary oversight and scrutiny by the Oireachtas, this committee and the Joint Committee on European Affairs. There is no lack of appetite at this committee to be more involved in foreign policy, which is important. When making the submission, there is no point in the committee’s asking to be more involved if the committee is not willing to do the work that flows from that.

I have brought here today the last White Paper the Department produced, in 1996. It was the first and it has been 18 years since that review. As the Chairman pointed out, I was quite young when it was produced. It was entitled Challenges and Opportunities Abroad. It is 350 pages long and references to the Oireachtas, the Dáil, Seanad and committees are relatively few and far between. There is one short chapter at the very end entitled Democratic Accountability of Foreign Policy. At the end of last year, when the Department issued the public consultation document for the new review of foreign policy, although it was relatively short it did not refer to any new insight into parliamentary involvement in Irish foreign policy. I hope that is not a sign that in the next White Paper the Department intends to move away from that, rather that it will incorporate it throughout the next document instead of sticking the parliamentary oversight into one chapter.

I noticed from the 2012 work programme for this committee that “the committee is committed to a constructive contribution to the committee system in the Houses of the Oireachtas and to continue to assert the proper oversight and accountability role of the Legislature in respect of the Executive”. This is very important for the committee. This review is the perfect opportunity to move that expression forward. The speaker before me pointed out that there are several things the committee already does, such as engaging in the scrutiny of EU proposals and communications, discussing policy issues of the Department and going through the long-term strategy goals. It is involved in the protection and promotion of human rights, the accountability of the Irish Aid programme, the annual Vote allocation for the Department as part of the budgetary process, engagement with fellow parliamentarians from other EU member states and from states around the world, and the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade comes here before the Foreign Affairs Council meeting to discuss that meeting. The committee does all these things, which is much of what the Government policy document envisaged it doing, as set out in Chapter 16 of the last White Paper. This committee had been formed only two and a half or three years before the White Paper was published, so it was in its infancy at that time.

The new White Paper, whether it lasts for ten or 20 years, provides a good opportunity for the committee to envisage its involvement in the future and for setting out new ideas for what it could do, while continuing to do what it does already. Yesterday, the Government produced its legislative programme for its spring and summer sessions. There is no foreign policy legislation coming forward, which is not unusual. Foreign policy is distinctly different from other public policy areas in that it is not based on legislation. It has to be examined and scrutinised in other ways and this committee has a role in that scrutiny. Foreign policy is Executive-dominated and so has to be scrutinised in a different way.

My paper is approximately 7,000 words or 28 pages long. I will pick a few items from it that I think the committee should prioritise. First is the time between the dissolution of the Dáil and the setting up of the committee in the next Dáil. Sometimes this can take six months, for example, in 2011 there was a change of Government. The Dáil was dissolved in January 2011. The general election was held in February and the new Government was formed in March 2011. There were Seanad elections in April, and in May some of the Senators were appointed. The committee structure was set up in June. It is not unusual to have a period of six months during which foreign policy, which is not based on legislation, does not have proper parliamentary oversight. The problem that creates is that, although the Parliament may not be conducting its oversight, there is a Government throughout that period, the Civil Service continues its work, the EU does not stop working – it has 27 other member states to deal with - so there must be a new way to scrutinise foreign policy during those periods. This affects other policy areas too, but because there is no legislation in the foreign policy area, it is particularly important.

In the referendum tied in with the presidential election in October 2011, it was proposed to constitutionalise the Oireachtas committees. As we all know, that was defeated for several reasons which I will not go into today. The only reference in Bunreacht na hÉireann to Oireachtas committees is to the committees on privilege in each House. There is absolutely no reference to a committee such as this one, a joint committee. That makes them inherently weak if they do not have a constitutional base, which is quite different from the situation in some other member states. The committee could consider this in the long term. In Denmark, not only are some of the committees constitutionalised but also, since 1953, the foreign affairs committee has been enshrined within the constitution.

We all know that the Minister comes in here before meetings of the Foreign Affairs Council and engages with members on upcoming proposals from some of his colleagues in Brussels or Luxembourg. The Minister does not have to receive a mandate. There is literally an exchange of views between members. The committee cannot mandate a Minister or the Government to hold a position on certain things. He can take the committee’s advice on board and go with it or discard it. After the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, generally, the Minister does not come back into this committee and report on any of the workings or compromises he has made or on developments in particular areas.