Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am in the Chairman's hands. I confirm I am in Leinster House. It is snowing outside; I hope I will be able to get back to Wexford.

I want to deal with the same two issues from a different perspective. There is no point in underscoring our collective reaction to the decision to trigger Article 16. It went beyond unfortunate and regrettable, but I suppose the Minister of State has to use those words. I am interested in getting behind the process. The Minister of State said that is a matter for the Commission, but it is a matter for all of us to know how the Commission operates. The President of the Commission said this was a decision of the college of Commissioners but we heard from our Irish nominated Commissioner that she was not alerted to it. Does the Minister of State know how this came about? It is akin to a Government decision being made without members of the Government being aware of it. I am sure that happened in the past, but it should not happen. There is a process. One would imagine that on something as sensitive as this there is a clear process. It undermines my confidence in the decision-making processes for the future. I would like to know how this happened, as I am sure would the Government. Where was the mistake or is there a structural difficulty in regard to all of this? In terms of this not happening again, the utterances of the Commission immediately afterwards did not indicate that would be the case.

It basically reserved the right, maybe, to exercise Article 16 again. As I said, I listened last week at the meeting to the EU ambassador to the UK, and he was less than clear in saying this was an action we should not have taken. That is the first question. I want to talk about ports on my second question shortly.