Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Minister. It was a lengthy contribution but it was necessary because I think it is important to go through the detail of what was being proposed at the General Affairs Council. I have a number of questions.

I have a question on the draft national reform programme. As the Minister of State states the recommendations are tailored specifically to each individual country. We have to comply with what is recommended or explain the reason we are not complying with the recommendations. One of the country specific recommendations CSR 1, is the recommendation on the budget, that in order to support fiscal consolidation, consideration should be given to raising revenues through broadening the tax base. This recommendation was made last year. The Minister of State outlined what Ireland has done to comply with this recommendation. We have brought in the property tax, we have abolished some tax credits and we have brought in a carbon tax. However, all of these measures were done in advance of this recommendation. Does the Minister of State think that will be sufficient to meet the requirements for an explanation, bearing in mind that the CSR recommendations would have been written post the introduction of those taxes and post the abolition of those credits?

The Minister of State may have been a member of the committee at the stage we did a report on Europe 2020, and how we would achieve the targets set in that strategy. We concluded that the strategy would be likely to fail in the delivery of its targets if it remained a top-down and a non-exclusive process. We thought it would be necessary to ensure there would be a partnership approach to the targets. Is the Minister of State satisfied that there is sufficient buy-in and engagement at local and regional levels with the relevant organisations to make sure we achieve the targets set out in the 2020 strategy?

At our committee meeting we had raised the question of Macedonia and the Minister of State's response to that was comprehensive. We were glad to see that he raised the issue at the General Affairs Council. I thank the Minister for doing so and we very much appreciate it.

This committee is concerned about the crisis in regard to migration and the situation in the Mediterranean. We discussed among ourselves the push-backs at the Bulgarian border. It is getting increasingly tense with potential migrants being harried and harassed at the border. This is a very important issue and we will discuss it again at our meeting next week to which we have invited the Italian and Maltese ambassadors and the UN special representative for global migration, Mr. Peter Sutherland. We hope they will give us an update on the situation in order to see what we as a national Parliament can do to add our voices to the concerns about the unfolding humanitarian crisis.

Senator Colm Burke is next.