Professor Gail McElroy:

Possibly, yes. Of course, the issues have gone to the sectoral committee and this may be a loss to the Dáil. The membership of the European Affairs committee are very interested in Europe and are passionate about it but perhaps it is not the top of the agenda of the legislation going to individual committees, but that is a debate for another day.

Every time the European Parliament elections happen, we have a conversation on the citizens disengaging from the process. There never was some glory time when the citizens were heavily informed and deeply passionate about the European Union, there was a permissive consensus, if anything, that broke down about 20 years ago. Deputy Durkan touched on many of the reasons that we have become more Eurosceptic. It is very convenient to blame Europe, there is a great deal of blame-shifting by national parliaments. Decision making is incredibly complex as members well know in the European Union and most citizens are not that interested in getting their head around the nature of the relations between the Commission, the Council and the Parliament, co-decision, co-operation and assent. It is very complex. This is problematic.

There is a role for the media. It may be a chicken and egg scenario in that Europe does not get coverage in the media in most of the EC countries. Some of the Scandinavian countries are better at covering it but they are becoming more Eurosceptic. It is not clear if the people are uninformed because the media does not cover it or the media does not cover it because the people do not care about it. It is a case of dual causality. Perhaps if one really wants to engage people then the Erasmus Plus and Socrates Plus programmes offer a move toward that. Some of the more successful arrangements for making people passionate about the European Union, are the daily interaction. People need to be reminded of the advantages of the Schengen Agreement, the eurozone and those kinds of issues. Much of the legislation coming out from the European Union is very technical and it is very hard to get people interested in lawn mower noise or bendy bananas, that is not an issue - but it is one that the British media went with.

There was some comment on the electoral system and we could spend all day speaking about the electoral systems. Certainly it is a factor that almost two thirds of German MEPs are returned, given the closed list system where the party gets to rank the candidates and there is not that degree of shifting. If I were to suggest one simple change as a way of changing the electoral system for the European elections in Ireland, it would be to increase the district magnitude as it would make it more proportional to have the country as one entity. One would lose the geographical connection, but we have lost it. Members have touched on the fact that the geographic connection is no longer there. With an 11 seater constituency one would approach better levels of proportionality. Three seater constituencies are problematic. The magic number is five or six for district magnitude. That would be one option. I am not sure but I do not think it would require a constitutional change, however, I am not a constitutional lawyer. I think it would be an easy change and would lead to greater proportionality.

On the question of branding of the candidates, there was some branding on the election posters, but it was definitely in a much smaller font than that of their political parties, such as the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil names. Deputy Byrne touched on this point, however, people are not aware of the groupings in the European Parliament. They have no clue and they do not care which parties the MEPs are in. That is not confined to Ireland but is replicated across the European Union. The European elections are second order elections, they are protest elections, people are voting on national issues. It is an old chestnut. One cannot force feed people information and to be interested in European elections. To some extent the switch by an Irish MEP to another party has given some coverage, to the remarkable fact that more than 150 national parties from the 28 member states managed to coalesce into seven or eight groups. Did the MEP have a mandate to join the ALDE group? Probably not, most people who voted for him did not know what group he was in.

Switching is very common in the European Parliament. It is not so common for British MEPs although there have been incidents of British and Irish MEPs switching but it is very common for the French and Italians. There are bizarre situations that half of the French from one group will be in different groups in the European Parliament and that is perfectly acceptable. It has not been the Irish tradition, and this is perhaps very controversial, in that one can have different parties from the same country in the same group in the European Parliament, even if they are on opposition and government benches. The Italians are famous for that. It is unlikely to happen for British or Irish parties but it certainly is an option.

On the question of what Brian Crowley, MEP, got from the ECR, I cannot speculate on that but by it becoming the third largest group there will be funding advantages.