Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Butler's presentation and the detailed paper. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to go through his paper in detail but I look forward to reading it later today. I have several comments. How does Mr. Butler see the European External Action Service developing? Does he see it impacting on our foreign policy in the future? It has not been a great success to date but there have been some recent improvements. For the longer term, how does Mr. Butler see it evolving?

We will never have effective scrutiny of EU legislation unless there is a specific role for Seanad Éireann. The reality is that the workload on Members of Dáil Éireann and on committees is very onerous and there is not the opportunity to give EU legislation the scrutiny it deserves.

Mr. Butler mentions on page 9 of his paper that "the Irish Parliament, historically at least, has demonstrated disinterest in EU and international affairs". I do not agree with that.