Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start with the Conference on the Future of Europe, the idea of the convention and everything that was done imperfectly from the point of view of the conference, especially at the beginning. The idea that greater and more consistent interaction with citizens is needed and that Europe is well removed from a considerable number of people was a big thing. Anyone who goes out into the street here would know that. We must follow up on the work that has been done and maintain a forum in which we can do it. Everyone bought into that idea. As important as all the interventions were, I was never quite clear why certain interventions made at plenary session or working group level were recorded on the books. We could probably say that about a lot of the work the European Movement Ireland did too.

As I stated in Europe, interactions and civic engagements on Ireland took place. I am referring specifically to Ireland's Future and we know it will hold a big event in the 3 Arena on Saturday. None of that plugged in, however, and even if it had, it would not have mattered. Only certain State interactions ended up in the overall report and it must have been on the basis of how the selections were made. That was a flaw at the organisers' end. I do not blame the European Movement Ireland, the committee or anyone else.

I understand that this all happened during the period of Covid initially. This was followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and we were also coming out of the Brexit situation, if we are ever to come out of it, and dealing with the relationship with Britain. The solidarity shown across Europe then and the vital pieces of work done at a European level, in particular the block-buying of vaccines, shows the European Union has an ability to operate even in areas where it does not have a competence. That could be missed to some degree when people are looking at reshaping the European Union. Major work needs to be done and follow-through is definitely needed. I am a bit disappointed with how some of the process went and that definitely needs to be dealt with at a later stage of interaction.

As regards the question of defence, it is probably not that surprising that people see defence in a slightly different form now. We see it from a point of view of the Russian invasion and asymmetrical warfare and hybrid operations, to use those great terms. We also see the absolute necessity of cyber. People realise what neutrality means and to some degree defence spending needs to be increased to enable neutrality and a non-aligned position and to do our fair share in that regard.

As Senator Chambers said, we probably need to do a lot of diving down into many of these questions. Some of the answers to the issues related to the Irish protocol are frightening. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that there is a misunderstanding as regards some of the answers that have come back.

Everybody deals with the issue in front of them, be it health or whatever else, in a silo and sometimes it gets simplified, as if we had five people in a room and we need to get a majority decision. People begin to think this does not make sense. At European level, everyone is thinking about Hungary and people are arguing that we need to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting, while missing the big wins for the European Union in recent times such as the fact that we could do deals. It was difficult for people to come up with agreements but they did and the European Union as a collection of democracies was able to operate on a level that controlled states or economies were not able to do. The arguments relating to the European Union and democracy within it have held up in recent times.

My main questions relate to drilling down on the questions that were asked, the issues surrounding the Conference on the Future of Europe and any proposals the witnesses have on how that could be improved as regards engagement. There was a failure on some level to provide the citizens with some of the information from the institutions in relation to what is being done and what can be done. Sometimes they are looking for answers that are not needed in the sense that, as a collective, we have shown an ability to come up with agreements. Treaty change or whatever will not necessarily be needed, although I do not rule it out.