Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I have regularly expressed my concern about the erosion of sovereignty which naturally comes about as our membership of the European Union. It is my view that we should only ever cede sovereignty when we are absolutely clear that it is in the best interests of the Irish people to do so. The Minister will recall that Protocol No. 21, which is attached to the EU treaties and essentially provides us with opt-ins, as opposed to locked-in positions, in respect of EU negotiation mandates, largely came about because of the decisions of the electorate on a number of occasions to reject EU treaties. The protocol was put in place precisely in order to ensure that the concerns of many Irish citizens in respect of any erosion of sovereignty would be addressed.

In the wider scheme of things, this might be a minor issue in that it deals with one specific state, but it is a concession of sovereignty in respect of a negotiated mandate. The Minister cited Article 3 on a number of occasions which, as he said, essentially brings us into the negotiation framework. It also ties us to the negotiating framework.

The Minister can correct me if I am wrong but I believe Article 4 allows us to enter into the process at a latter stage or the end stage, when we can see precisely what we are voting for. I gather from his opening statement that the Minister would argue that Article 3 allows us to be part of the negotiations and that this is valuable. However, when advocating for the Article 4 approach, previous Ministers have told committees of this House that this approach would not lock us out of the negotiations and that, because an Article 4 opt-in was likely, Irish negotiators were part of the discussions throughout. Therefore, I would contend that Article 4 provides us with the best of both worlds in many respects. Does the Minister have thoughts on that?