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

I thank our guests. For their sake, we should explain that LMFM is easily the most important radio station to Deputy Ó Murchú and many others in Dundalk. The Deputy asked many of the questions I was going to ask but from a slightly different mindset, which is understandable. I want to push on with some of the points he made and some of the answers that have been given. I thank both our guests for a substantive opening address and, indeed, responses so far, which have addressed head-on many of the issues that have floated around these various engagements. It is refreshing and welcome. We are all very grateful for it.

The witnesses spoke about the experiences of reopening and where we are on the need to finish off CETA. I will move more generally to the issue of EU trade policy. We will question our Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment in the Dáil tomorrow morning and he will reflect on the most recent trade Council meeting held just a week ago.

From Mr. Schlegelmilch's professional perspective, how important is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, the discussions taking place and the final ratification for the entirety of European trade policy in the coming decade, bearing in mind we are coming out of a pandemic and negotiations are ongoing with other jurisdictions, which are being closely watched as is the CETA process? They are many other jurisdictions where the European Union would be ambitious to conclude trade negotiations, jurisdictions that offer a major trade potential to Irish exporters and to all exporters.

Mr. Schlegelmilch mentioned the engagement and submissions made by all member state governments and the various European institutions. At what stage have either of our guests or their colleagues engaged with other member states' national or regional parliaments on CETA, to what extent has that level of engagement taken place, what issues have been raised and is there a common thread in that respect across the Union? Could they flesh out for our sake the extent of stakeholder engagement that has gone into this process with the European umbrella organisations or various others from the non-governmental organisation, trade, business and representative sectors? An argument has been put forward that this is somehow being rushed. I was a rapporteur on a trade file in the European Committee of the Regions nearly seven years ago and we were talking about CETA then. I fail to understand how this is being rushed. It would be important to underline this is not something that is being lumped on the Irish Parliament at the last minute. This agreement has had years and hundreds of thousands of man-hours invested in it on our behalf by the Commission and other institutions. I would appreciate if Mr. Schlegelmilch could provide clarity on those points.