Professor Gavin Barrett:

The other speakers have covered a lot of the ground I wanted to. On Deputy Calleary's question about delay, the original idea was that this process would kick off to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the 1950 Schuman Declaration that launched the European Union, as it were, but it has been delayed for a number of reasons I mentioned, particularly Covid-19 but also the difficulty in getting someone to chair it. Also, some member states are less enthusiastic than others. Professor Fabbrini mentioned the hope that has been expressed that this would end by the French Presidency in the first half of 2022. I doubt, to be honest, the capacity of the member states to get it done by that time. The Franco-German non-paper of November 2019 anticipated the whole process kicking off in January 2020 and that it would end in the French Presidency. If we are now in November and it has not kicked off yet, we are really looking at the debate ending, at the earliest, towards the end of 2022 and perhaps even into 2023. Remember, that only involves a report to the European Council. After that, there must be an actual debate among the member states on treaty change. It is going to be a little slower than we would like. That is not all bad because it gives time for deliberation and thinking, but it lacks the element of urgency or speed that it might otherwise have had.

Deputy Calleary also mentioned online exclusion, and Dr. Day mentioned the key reasons for that, and I think it is the absence, for linguistic reasons really, of a single and political space at a European level. To a large extent, that is something that results in the debate at European level not always coming down to national level. We do not have one single European political space; we have 27 different political spaces. Yes, online exclusion is a reality. There is only an elite of us who can take part in these things. The Internet is there for all of us, but how many of us actually use it? We should be grateful that it is there, though, and that it lets those who have an interest get in there, but the problem is generating an interest for the others.

I echo what Dr. Day said. It will be vital in the context of Brexit, a situation in which we can no longer hold on to the coat tails of the British at this stage of the debate in the UK, that we generate our own debate on the very important European issues out there.

Deputy Richmond raised the very important question of the rule of national parliaments. With all the focus on citizens' dialogue, it is possible to lose sight of the vital and ongoing role of national parliaments. In a study of the role of national parliaments by Hafner et al., parliaments were divided into five kinds. There are those that scrutinise, in other words, consider EU issues at length without necessarily influencing policy debates. There are debating arenas - chambers that strongly mobilise the chamber through debates on European issues. There are policy shapers like the Danish Parliament that influence government positions through mandates or scrutiny reserves. There are Commission watchdogs that participate in the political dialogue and the early warning mechanism - dialoguing with the Commission, if you like. There are scrutiny laggards that do not do an awful lot. The actual role of a parliament depends on a lot of factors, including the relative power of the parliament in the national system. If the national parliament is not very powerful in the national system, it is unlikely to exercise a very strong role in European issues.

Another point that must be made about this is that the role a national parliament is going to have must be both selected and seized. The Irish Parliament, and Senator McDowell had a lot to do with this, seized the agenda to a certain extent when it came to the role of the Seanad in respect of Brexit by bringing people in and getting interested parties and stakeholders, particularly from Northern Ireland, to talk about Brexit. It is up to the Oireachtas to seize the agenda and it is up to this committee to a certain level to decide what it wants to do with regard to this conference. It can play a hugely important role in bringing in interested persons and stakeholders, providing a link between the national debate and the European debate and to that extent, filling in the gap that exists between European and national levels. However, this is not something that will happen by itself. It needs to be seized by the scruff of the neck by the Oireachtas and this committee.

COSAC has a role but it is a limited one. Its role is to put parliamentarians in contact with each other and to a certain extent put them in contact with the ongoing European-level debate. The focus is really on the national parliaments and what they can do. The Oireachtas can play a key role in this regard and I very much hope that it seizes it with regard to the conference.