Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is just about to become massively apparent.

I am talking about waste, overlapping and duplication. To what extent has the court seen such situations? How does it examine and deal with them? My colleagues have rightly referred to what happens in the agriculture sector. How we can eliminate the issuing by one Department of a directive that is in violation of another Department's objectives, for want of a better description? If the two of them are in conflict with each other, the only way this can be resolved, even if it leads to massive losses, is to get massive input from legal experts and bring all kinds of consultants on board.

I asked earlier for an identification of the issues that create Euroscepticism. What are the issues that create Euroscepticism in this country? The one that comes immediately to mind is the habitats directive. The issue of turf cutting was a major issue in the most recent European elections. It does not affect urban areas, but it certainly affected vast tracts of rural areas. Aircraft were sent to monitor the activities of some guy who was cutting turf in a small area where his grandfather and his grandfather's grandfather had cut turf previously. To my mind, it is utterly and totally ridiculous for that kind of thing to happen. It has to be possible to find an alternative way of doing things, other than by spending money on heavy-handed activity to ensure a directive is complied with. If the directive cannot be complied with, it should not be there in the first place. The degree to which we contribute to the debate beforehand is limited to say the least. We do not normally get a chance to contribute. When I was serving as Chairman of this committee, I was told at a meeting in Brussels by a number of people that they represented millions of people all over Europe. None of them were politicians at all. They had no such function at all. They were never elected by anybody anywhere.