Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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I thank Ms O'Connell and compliment her on the quality of her presentation. I also thank her for the ongoing work of European Movement Ireland, whose work I am familiar with, including the Blue Star programme for primary schools. I wish the movement further success with its programmes.

I note that the next six months will be very intensive and I believe it is very important to involve our citizens in as many ways as possible during our Presidency. We wish EM Ireland well in that regard and look forward to hearing further updates in the coming months. I attended the launch of the aforementioned accountability report several months ago.

I find it a useful document because it helps keep tabs on what is going on where.

The report states the attendance rate of members of the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs under the Thirty-First Dáil is 71%. How does this rate compare with other committees of this House? How does it compare with similar parliamentary committees across the European Union? Are there are any plans in the next report to publish the individual attendance rates?

The report also states “27% of all General Affairs Council meetings that took place under the Thirty-First Dáil had pre-Council briefings in front of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs”. This figure represents three out of 11 Council meetings. However, it is important to state why there were no briefings for the other eight Council meetings. For four of these Council meetings, this committee had not been established. For another of those meetings, the former committee Chairman, Deputy Costello, had just been made a Minister of State so he had to cancel the briefing and, on another occasion, he was in New York on business. There are extenuating circumstances for the low figure of these briefings. It was not that the Minister could not attend the committee but the committee itself was not able to receive the Minister. I must point out that since I became Chairman of this committee in January, the Minister of State, Deputy Creighton, has attended every single meeting. Sometimes it feels like she is here all the time. Her attendance has been excellent and I would not like the message to go out that our Ministers have been remiss in attending this committee.