Mr. Barry Andrews:

In my engagement with the committee about an hour ago I made the mistake of answering the questions I was asked.

Maybe I should just discuss lots of other topics.

Deputy Richmond had probably read my full submission so he will know where I stand on this matter. I believe that the Lisbon treaty contains a lot of unused and under-used provisions that can go an awful long way to ensure that whatever comes out of the Conference on the Future of Europe can be given effect without treaty change. That does not mean that treaty change is completely out of the question but there is a huge amount we can do through using some of those provisions, which includes those on health and mental health. There is nothing to stop us funding mental health and providing soft law guidance on these things.

The one thing that we must take away from the pandemic is that the EU competence in the area of health has been completely inadequate. Certainly, at the very beginning it was inadequate and did not meet the expectations of EU citizens. The Conference on the Future of Europe will be all about listening to EU citizens. It will be a bottom-up exercise. It will require an awful lot of townhall meetings and face-to-face meetings.

In terms of the potential topics that are on the agenda around transnational lists and the Spitzenkandidaten process, I do not think people are ready for that. We need to get through this pandemic before we start the process of wide public consultation on the future of Europe.

On the migration issued raised by Deputy Richmond, we need to win back the argument about the benefits of migration. I have included in my submission some specific research on the benefits of migration. The problem is that those benefits are not evenly spread. A lot of people will wonder about the paradox of why people who live in places with very few migrants vote for right-wing populists. They do so because they do not feel the benefit of an open, globalised, migration-fuelled economy and receive the downsides. We must make sure that globalisation is fair, sustainable and that its benefits, including free trade deals, are spread evenly throughout the European Union if we are ever going to win this argument.

We must also acknowledge the following. When the whole of Europe, and not just Germany, took in 1 million refugees in 2015-2016 it represented 0.2% of the European population. In the context of the demographic challenge that the EU faces, migration should not be a problem as these people are educated and genuinely fleeing for their lives so we must win that argument. It is right that we must consider these issues through a humanitarian lens, which is the Irish tradition, and not through a security lens or more so through a humanitarian lens than a security lens.

I shall leave my replies at that and hope that I have answered the question.