Dr. James Cross:

I will start with the questions of whether just having access to information is enough and what we do with all of this information. The status quois that the provision of records is almost like an information dump. The records are not well linked. The European Parliament is slightly better, in that one can carry out meta searches and find the areas one is interested in. The Council does not have this facility. It provides records in permanent document format, PDF. They are generally not searchable. They are available in a document register. Users can carry out keyword searches, but because it is not a very advanced document register, one invariably gets a thousand results for every search. It is hard to sort what is relevant from all the other information. It is almost as though by providing so much information the institution is becoming less transparent, because it is not clear what is relevant and what is not. That is definitely a problem, and I think the EU Council could do a lot better by having a more intuitive search function to help explore the information than it does now.

If the whole process was made more transparent, could it be misused? This recalls the famous image of the hacker sitting in his bedroom, looking to undermine the Union. I do not think there is that much nefarious information in the documents as they currently stand. Of course, the European Ombudsman is proposing to change that and wants positions to be better recorded than they currently are, and for the identities of those taking positions to be recorded. That could give more information to individuals with nefarious ideas. However, if the actors involved are taking positions that are against the public interest, that should be public information. The overall benefit of making the process more transparent probably outweighs the costs.

Moving onto Senator Leyden's observations, I note that there is a difference with negotiations at the highest level, for example, those pertaining to the SEA. Generally these are treaty negotiations and things like that. They are never going to be very transparent, and that is because room for compromise is needed. Access to that information will never be provided in a timely manner. I would not endorse doing so, because I think it would do more harm than good. It would open up issues that need to be negotiated in closed door settings, at least where high-level decisions are concerned. However, we are not just discussing those negotiations, but also negotiations over secondary legislation, which I would say is much less politicised but also has a very important impact.

A huge percentage of Irish legislation now comes from Brussels, as we know. We need information on how that was decided and whether our representatives fought the good fight, got their way and managed to influence people. We do not have that at the moment. We have no idea. It is difficult to hold decision makers accountable for decisions. That is true across the board whether one likes the decision or not.

On the question of whether Council meetings are recorded, they are. Anyone interested in such things can watch the proceedings of the European Council on its website. However, if this was actually done, it would show some of the positive and negative effects of transparency that I mentioned in my opening statement. The delegations will stand up and read out prepared statements. There is no deliberation going on. All the decisions have been taken outside of the room. This is just representatives standing up and reading out positions. Then there is a vote. However, it all is pre-ordained, almost. It is not very informative for anyone trying to follow how decisions are made.

It is a pity because in theory, providing public access to these meetings is a good thing. However, the effect is that decisions are taken outside of the room and then prepared statements are read out. That is probably part of politics at the highest level. Generally, what happens at the ministerial level is that much of the details have been threshed out by the working groups and the committee of permanent representatives, COREPER, beforehand. We know little about how those decisions are made in those contexts and having a bit more transparency around those meetings would be very informative.

The Scandinavians tend to be quite transparent. They are used to the process of transparency and would say it is a better way of running Government. The French have a different idea on transparency and access. As has been said, there are these different cultures of transparency in Europe. That is certainly the case.

On the costs and benefits on total transparency, Deputy Durkan is absolutely right. When decision makers know they are on record, they are sometimes more reticent to take positions than they would be in closed-door settings, which can be problematic. However, it can also be a good thing because at least we know the positions they are taking when they take them. The point is that there is a trade-off in this regard and one must figure out what is one's position on that. As for whether it can slow down negotiations, yes there is a lot of work extant suggesting that if transparency is increased, it can have a negative effect on the efficiency of decision-making processes. We are back to the idea that when decision makers know they are on record, they are more reticent to take positions. However, perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps the EU to date has been too good and too efficient at making decisions and it is putting out legislation that has not been debated properly and of which the public is not aware. If the process was more transparent, and they were aware, then maybe these decisions might not be made. That is another thing that has to be weighed up. Efficiency has its costs as well. It can lead to legislation and decisions that do not reflect the will of the people and what the citizens would be interested in.