Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have three more comments. On foot of what Deputy Lawlor said, a common message emerging from the European players at all our meetings concerns engagement by national parliaments. The main reason we went to Brussels was to elaborate on our new role as a committee in the Lisbon process. We do a lot of EU scrutiny here and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is a major help in equipping us for that. However, we want to go further with the process. It is very clear from all our meetings that, in order to influence emerging EU legislation, we need to have early engagement in the legislative process at national parliament level by way of impact assessments. When EU legislation comes from the Commission to us, and probably the Department in some cases, it is too late. The Department was told it would be involved at an earlier stage, but it can be a bit too late for ourselves. We want to have much earlier intervention. It is up to us to watch out for the White and Green Papers and to be part of the process.

The second comment is that during a meeting with the director general of the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, Daniel Crespo, he referred to the need to update the state aid rules to reflect the need to finance SMEs. Since then, a communication was adopted. I refer to the guidelines on state aid to promote risk capital investments. Does that change the state of play here? Have the delegates any thoughts on that? Will it benefit our SMEs? Mr. Rochford might answer those questions. Mr. Paul Cullen might respond on the state of play regarding the European semester and our reform plan. While it is not to be published until the spring, he might update us on the current position.