Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the question about something really desirable that was not achieved because of a veto, it does sometimes happen that at the Foreign Affairs Council, there might be a statement on human rights violations in particular countries that is vetoed by one country. What happens is that they do not hold a vote; they merely withdraw the proposal. It just does not happen because one country has said "No". That is its right. With the vast majority of items that go through the Council of Ministers routinely, there would not necessarily be anything other than unanimity even with a range of ordinary directives and regulations. What can happen during the negotiations is there might be a bloc or minority that might try to work for its particular agenda. It might not stop it but it might try to change a law. That can happen based on the numbers and we have seen it happen on a number of occasions. At every Council meeting, they put the next item of legislation that needs to be passed on the agenda. They have gone through all the discussions at departmental and Council level and the committee of permanent representatives to the EU, COREPER. There is a technical vote at our Council. They are all unanimous. They would not necessarily require that. It may be that countries that may have been opposed to them have got some changes to them. Again, it is a process of negotiation. It does happen at the Foreign Affairs Council. In my experience over the past couple of years, the European Council has always tried to get a result and to bring people together. If you look at the conditionality regulation, that was effectively on rule of law. That was essentially decided at the European Council. That required unanimity. The deal done there was that we will hold off on implementation until Hungary and Poland take a challenge to the European Court of Justice so that was a bit of compromise. They took the challenge. We supported the Council and the decision against Hungary and Poland in that case. The court ruled against them and now that is in place. Again, unanimity achieved a lot in there even though it was messy and complex and did not satisfy everybody at the time. It has definitely achieved a lot in my opinion.

Regarding some of the energy questions, I have to say that they would really be a matter for the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. They are all European issues. Some agreements between the EU and various entities such as Azerbaijan have been reached. There is also an agreement with Israel. Not all of them are to provide immediate relief. The Commission is working on the overall package and we would be quite happy for it to do that once it takes everybody's circumstances into account. It is something that needs the Commission to lead on. Ultimately, that will be to our benefit.

Having much more offshore wind is certainly our ambition and is very much part of our European obligations. Listening to what Deputy Howlin said about the delays, I will make the point that when this Government came into office, there was no planning structure there. The Maritime Area Planning Act was passed. It was incredibly complex legislation. It is now through and the other stuff is following on from that.

Regarding coverage of politics, sometimes we have to make our own coverage but it is important that we have as many outlets as possible. I know part of the Government is providing support to make sure outlets can provide the type of public service coverage they are required to, including through the licence fee, which has been there for decades. That then imposes an obligation to the broadcaster that receives that, RTÉ, and the general terms of licensing of broadcasting in this country require broadcast outlets to provide news coverage. Some do it well, which I welcome. I accept what the Deputy says but ironically, there are now more avenues to see what we are doing. Anyone around the country can tune into this today. They could not do that 20 years ago so there are more avenues. Again, we all have to take responsibility but if we do not have information and knowledge out there about what is happening in the democracy, the democracy will die and we see that starting to happen in America in terms of local and state coverage. It is very worrying and we definitely cannot allow that to happen here. One of the important objectives of the European Commission and the European Union and one thing we discuss regularly at the Council is media freedom and plurality. Making sure that is there is one of the things we are very concerned about because it is part of democracy and something we keep a very close eye on in all member states, particularly where it has been identified as an issue.