Mr. James Temple-Smithson:

I thank the members for their welcome advice and encouragement. I will try to respond to all points raised. Please let me know if I do not.

It is well established that the question of the image and direction of the European Union is one that occupies the minds of communicators and politicians. I agree that young people are a very important target for us to focus on. There is a lot of survey evidence that shows that people under 30 are the demographic most enthusiastic about the European project. This has been demonstrated not just in the Brexit vote, but everywhere in Europe. It is very important for us to foster and encourage that. The big challenge for us in the European Parliament is that that enthusiasm for Europe does not necessarily manifest itself in people turning out to vote in European elections. That is a big challenge that we face.

I will now turn to the issue of the campaign. I believe it is particularly relevant to young people, but the timing of our campaign for the EU elections, and timing in politics, as in everything, is critical, and in the 2014 EU elections we started trying to communicate in September before the elections the following June. That was probably too early and we spread ourselves too thinly. At the same time, it is true that the majority of attention is paid in the last two weeks, but we cannot leave the campaign until the last two weeks. Getting that balance, and how we build up to a crescendo in the last two weeks, is something we need to look at in our campaign.

On the status of the specialist committee reports, the body in charge of co-ordinating the European Parliament's response on Brexit is the leaders of the political groups, the Conference of Presidents. The reports were produced and sent to them. For the time being they have not taken any decision on the status of the reports. This is a kind of ad hocprocess and there is no decision on the status of whether they will be published. They have been pretty comprehensively leaked. I have read all about them in the newspapers but not through the official European Parliament channels. That is understood and perhaps the group will consider releasing these reports as they have been quite widely reported, but I do not know what the position is. I will find out and write to the committee to let it know the position in this regard.

Reference was made to concrete benefits. The point made about mobile roaming is very interesting in the context of the Border. It feeds into my earlier points on the European Parliament needing that information about areas, for example, where the implementation of EU directives is not working properly or is malfunctioning. That is the sort of information that needs to be fed in through whatever channels to parliamentarians and to the European Commission in order that they know that is the case. I am not sure if there is official awareness that this is the case. The status of that legislation in the North after 2019 is an open question. Whether the situation will improve is also contingent on what happens there.

Deputy Crowe spoke of the turnout in the EU elections. There are six people in our office so we cannot take full responsibility for the level of turnout, but we need all the help we can get. This is why I was very grateful for the Chairman's suggestion and initiative to try to involve politicians at all levels in Ireland with that. We would be very grateful for any assistance and will try to mobiles all the resources we can.

We can certainly assist with visits to the European Parliament. We help a lot with such programmes when universities are travelling over. We do not really have any financial resources. The MEPs have a certain number of groups per year that they can sponsor and they contribute in that way. We are always happy to help with logistical advice, planning and suggestions. We can contact MEPs for the groups and help them to put together a good programme in order that they get a really good experience when they are there. If the Deputy is referring to assistance with travel costs, that is really in the hands of the Members.

There is a long story attached to our premises on Lower Mount Street, which pre-dates me. It is a great shame that we are where we are. We do still have facilities and hold events, but we do not have the footfall. I read recently that in the previous building we had one person employed full-time to deal with walk-in inquiries from members of the public, and that person was busy all the time. The footfall at our current location creates one or two walk-in inquiries per day. That is a great shame. Looking to the future, we rent the building we are now in, we do not own it and the lease is for a certain period of time. After that, the lease will be up and it may be possible to move again. The prices in this part of the city are quite prohibitive but the location is important for the sort of facility we want to offer. We want to be able to improve what we offer to citizens and to people who have inquiries, as well as for meetings. That is well understood by the political authorities in the European Parliament and Commission, so let us see where that situation gets to.

I am not sure that I understood the point made about parliamentarians visiting. When parliamentarians from Ireland visit the European Parliament, there is a communication effort for those events, which is handled by our colleagues in the press department in the Parliament in Brussels. If Members are visiting from here and if they contact us, we can certainly hook them up with the press team in Brussels in order that they can link up and understand what is going on, especially if there are images being put out on Facebook or Twitter that members want to re-tweet, share or otherwise benefit from.

The European Union Parliament issues a limited number of grants in the area of media and communications. There was a new call for expressions of interest last week on media and events related grants. These are specific to the communications field and most of the grants are administered by the European Commission. We hold a number of events in this area but we must be careful how we market them. Since we are not the body giving the grant, we do not want to disappoint people by telling them to come along to an event about EU funding to find out how to get money. Our thing is normally a bit more upstream than that, but we hope to hold an event in April about the EU budget for next year and financing the EU in the long term. It is not, however, about organisations getting grants directly, although that also exists and we can help to point people in the right direction if members have constituents who are interested.

I will now turn to access to the European Parliamentary Research Service. At the moment it is largely channelled through the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, but there are various mailing lists and alerts for which Members can sign up and we will happily put people directly into contact with them and talk them through it. If we do hold this information session, which I would very much like to do for Members or their staff, we will explain in detail how they can sign up to get this information. No one wants to get spammed by thousands of publications per year, but they want to get the interesting, concise information directly relevant to their work.

The petition process still very much exists. We get inquiries about it and we explain to people how the petitions process works. There are petitioners from Ireland on a regular basis whose petitions are considered routinely in the committee. One of the innovations in the legislative cycle project is around the review of existing legislation. When reviews happen, the European Parliament looks at petitions. If there are a couple of dozen petitions about particular legislation, then we know this flags up a problem with the legislation and it should be taken into account by MEPs when that legislation is reviewed. This had not happened in the past but it does now. If anything, the petitions process has a more robust presence in the system than perhaps it did before.

Senator Leyden asked about the move of our premises. He is right that the politics of Brexit are not for my level, but I believe it is important for MEPs to understand the dynamics and what is at stake in Ireland. In our small way, in our reporting back to MEPs and the authorities, we communicate that and we do our best to make sure it is understood. We invite MEPs from other countries to attend our events. For example, MEPs from other countries will be invited to the event in Dundalk on the environment. They will see for themselves and hear at first hand the issues. We can contribute to the understanding of the issues in a small way.

Brexit will be the top issue and will feature prominently in our activities. It is an opportunity and people are interested in the subject. There is a real dearth of information and we can add value through our activities. I thank the Chairman and the committee. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity and for the members' encouragement.