Dr. Barry Colfer:

I will say four quick things, because Professor Barrett covered vaccinations. That really showed the limits of what the EU can do without fundamental change. Alongside NextGenerationEU, the Covid recovery, it would be risky to do anything major on that scale again without taking the citizens with us. On the well-documented atrocities in Gaza, the diversity of views just proves my previous point about the limits of EU foreign policy. If you want to talk about something unseemly, just watch the disagreements across the capitals regarding that atrocious conflict. It confirms my view that EU foreign policy will remain limited in nature.

I will also comment about something else the Deputy touched on. The support Ireland enjoyed during the UK's protracted withdrawal from the bloc is worth mentioning briefly. Among many other things, that focused the minds of some wavering member states, or those which would occasionally say that if things that did not go a certain way they might also look at leaving. For all of its flaws the UK has an extremely well-regarded civil service. For that country to have such a tough time leaving, it focused the minds of some of the countries - or more rightly, parties - who would have called for an exit. I do not know if that makes treaty reform more or less likely. It certainly changes the dynamic a bit. It takes one veto off the table, because member states will be much less likely to leave after that experience.

I was obviously not as involved in the Conference on the Future of Europe, CofE, as the Deputy, but I followed it. I get what he says about the simplistic nature, but it was ever thus. If you ask non-experts to look at something really complicated while they are dealing with all the other complexities life throws at them between work, family and everything else, it will always be simplistic. This is not to disagree with the Deputy, because I had more limited insight attending the meetings we had in Dublin. I thought representation felt quite good. There seemed to be people from all walks of life, but you are still taking several weekends out of your year. Only a certain cohort of people can do that. My issue with CofE is not necessarily around representation, which I need to take a closer look at. It is at the prospect and scale of asking citizens. One of the good things about our citizens' assemblies, which people take great interest in, is that they are both expert but very specific. It says we are looking at this question, and this question alone.

As with my last remarks, I will end with something big. Jean Monnet said that, "Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises." Each treaty reform has had a thing, whether a crisis, or a conference or a coming together of things. The Single European Act had the Single Market. The Maastricht Treaty had the euro and the establishment of the European Union. The Amsterdam and Nice treaties had enlargement. The reconstruction of Ukraine, let us hope it is sooner rather than later, will probably be the next critical juncture. The United States will have a different attitude towards the reconstruction of Europe than it did in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I would not say all bets are off. However, when it comes to taking responsibility for what Pat Cox has called a big, agricultural, poor pro-European country on our border, I can see that being the thing that focuses minds in the next phase of treaty reform. We had not really mentioned it, so I thought I would mention it.