Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their excellent presentations. Before I ask my questions, I echo Deputy Calleary's remarks regarding Irish influence within the institutions. Ms Day set a high bar for others to follow. I fear that we do not have the numbers there. I say that as someone who managed only two years in Brussels and then came home and so I am, in part, responsible.

I want to focus on a number of issues that were raised initially by Ms Day but also by Professor Barrett. The first issue is the role of national parliaments. There is an understandable focus on the important role of citizens' dialogues, with which I am familiar from a previous life. That is so important. In previous lengthy discussions about the future of Europe, the formation of treaties and the draft constitution, the focus was very much on Brussels and the institutions of the EU. One of the gaps, which Professor Barrett elaborated on, is the role of national parliaments. This role is even more important than that of citizens' dialogues. We are the legislators, the elected public representatives and the front-facing part of democracy, be it domestic or European. There must be a role that is far greater than having debates and discussions like this. There needs to be a formal decision-making process.

Deputy Calleary rightly referred to the importance of the parliament and the centralisation of power within the European Council. What is the role of a body such as the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union, COSAC? Where is the formal involvement of member state parliaments, national and regional, in the next stage of the EU? Taking in context the different approaches to negotiating trade agreements and the fact that mixed agreements have to go to national parliaments, there is a gap in engaging national parliaments. We know what happened in terms of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, and the Wallonian Parliament. National parliamentarians no longer attend the European assembly. That has not happened for decades. The dual mandate has been removed. Our MEPs play a vital role. Many of them engaged with this committee last week and we had a good discussion on this issue. It comes back to subsidiarity, which is a word I do not like to use but it is central to everything that is done in the EU and how we get what is discussed at a European level translated to citizens.

The key aspect of that is one's national parliament, and for other countries more so than Ireland, regional parliaments. Professor Fabbrini referenced previous models such as Messina and the lessons that can be learned. Some of them were successful, but all were not. Previous discussions that led to a treaty change were successful while others were not. Were the discussions that led to the Nice and Lisbon treaties successful, in that they were rejected initially by the Irish population, the issues were hijacked and it became about fringe issues rather than the central topics? We do not have a European constitution. Following years of top-level work on that by people such as John Bruton and the witnesses, it fell at the first hurdle. How do we ensure that this does not happen? We accept that this process may lead to treaty change. We should not fear that in a post-Brexit era but it does not have to be an inevitability. Maybe we should park that. If it comes to that, it comes to that and we will deal with it then.

I believe that the role of national parliaments from the get-go needs to be focused on identifying the common policies and the gaps in the European process that need to be fixed. If not for the pandemic, would we be talking about health competencies? What are the common areas? We had a really illuminating discussion with our MEPs last week and we are doing some work on the migration and refugee crisis. Is this as big an issue for us in Dublin as it is for colleagues in, say, the Italian Parliament or the Greek Parliament? We know it is not. The same applies in regard to issues around the rule of law and the impact of Brexit. These are far bigger issues for Ireland than for Bulgaria.

We talk about the importance of citizens' dialogues. What is important is the outcome of that process and how we deal with issues more fairly. The Union, I would argue, is stronger now than ever before. It is more important now than ever before. The response to Covid has been effective but limited. It has not been limited by effort but by circumstance and ability. The budget that was agreed yesterday in the European Parliament is sizeable and has the ability to do a lot of good. We are, however, great at talking about the EU when we need to blame someone or to criticise. This happens a lot, but it is not necessarily an issue for the witnesses but for the wider public and particularly parliamentarians in national parliaments. Where is our responsibility as elected representatives to talk about all the good things? Where in the national media was the European budget reported yesterday? Why are we not discussing the co-operation between member states about Romanian doctors going to Italy or French patients going to German hospitals? Why are we not talking about EU stockpiling and the work that is going on in Finland?

The greatest lesson of Brexit is that if one spends 45 years attacking something, it is very hard to convince people in six weeks the merits of remaining in it. That is not the fault of the Union. A lot of people like to point to the institutions not communicating Europe. I have been critical of the Commission in saying that it could sell itself better. This process needs to focus on the role of national parliamentarians. People will generally know how their like Deputy, MP or Assembly member is but they might not know who their MEP is. They probably do not know the identity of the Commissioner for Agriculture. That is the difficulty in this process. I would appreciate the views of all three witnesses on how national parliamentarians could, if not take ownership in this regard, have far more than a consultative role in order that they can push this along in a timeline that I would hope would be a lot more ambitious than years, although I share Deputy Calleary's slight cynicism in that regard.