Professor Gavin Barrett:

On foreign defence and energy policy, I have a feeling Dr. Colfer probably has more to say about that than I do. The issue I would see with foreign policy at the moment is that unanimity is everywhere. I am not sure that is tenable in a Union of 27 member states. There are always sensitive veto points. As the Senator pointed out, Ireland is a neutral country so we have a very particular perspective on defence ourselves. The overwhelming prevalence of unanimity is something that needs to be looked at. Although a lot of the decisions are executive decisions, at the same time there is an almost complete exclusion of the European Court of Justice and there is an exclusion of parliamentary scrutiny as well. Those are particular issues. There are other things, such as particular structures that do not seem to have worked all that well, like battle groups for instance.