Ms Noelle O'Connell:

The language issue is certainly a challenging one. Many people went into non-EU-related areas during the boom times. We strongly believe there needs to be an increased focus on, appreciation of and awareness of languages. There is a slight level of apathy. There is also a lack of information on and awareness of the opportunities that exist. That is something we are trying to change. My colleague, Mr. Richmond, has carried out an overview of every EU-related third level programme of study in the country. We will publish that review, which is far more extensive than the report we are discussing today, with the support of the European Commission representation here in Dublin. It will be distributed to every second level school, every career guidance counsellor and every careers service in every third level institution in the country. We outline the various internships that are available in the various EU institutions in our green book publication. We are working to lessen the information deficit in the third level sector.

Deputy Durkan spoke about meetings that clash with meetings of this committee. I can empathise with him as he faces such challenges. I should add that European Movement Ireland is very supportive of the work of this committee. We look forward to continuing to work with the committee to do everything possible to publicise and promote what it does and increase the level of engagement of Irish people. In advance of the referendum on the fiscal stability treaty, various business groups and organisations with different viewpoints were allowed to make presentations at this forum. We were afforded similar opportunities. I commend the committee on the information booklet and various reports it produced at that time.

We would welcome more developments in this regard, which are very positive.

I thank Deputy Kyne for his feedback and questions. I feel I should ask members to send us their suggestions and comments by e-mail so that we could incorporate them. While we have been fortunate in terms of the feedback and engagement we have received from MEPs, our information is based on the information available in the public domain. Owing to the feedback from and our consultations with the MEPs, we intend to focus on more than the speeches and questions raised and to broaden what we do. This will be one of the recommendations in our report next year.

The Deputy asked about the ambassadors and our series of town hall regional briefings on the Presidency and European Year of the Citizen 2013. We were approached by a number of ambassadors who were seeking ways of engaging with different groups throughout the country. We were fortunate to work with the European Commission representation in organising seven regional economic conferences on the European economic situation, at which we had a number of local speakers. We also visited the institutes of technology and third level institutions throughout the country, which were extremely well attended. This provided people with an opportunity to question officials and economists about the economic developments of the day and allowed us all gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves. We propose to use that template next year in the context of our review of citizenship engagement, developments in the Irish Presidency and to afford opportunities to the ambassadors to bring their perspectives to how the Irish Presidency is progressing and what they believe are the developments from the European year of citizens. We propose to hold open debate and discussion to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to have their voices heard next year. The town hall briefings will play an important part in this regard.

On the question about sentiment surveys - I do not wish to bamboozle members with statistics - the Eurobarometer polls are the flagship in terms of sentiment surveys. In 2007, Irish sentiment, at 72%, was favourably disposed towards the EU. This declined in 2011 to approximately 54%. European Movement Ireland proposes to work with a number of different organisations on a pre-Presidency EU sentiment survey among the Irish people and to do a post-presidency sentiment survey, the findings of which we hope to publish. We want to capitalise on the unique opportunity which Ireland's Presidency of the European Council affords us. We have found through our work to date that the desire among Irish people, which as per recent polls is between 75% to 80%, to remain firmly within the eurozone remains strong. People are favourably disposed towards the EU, which is a positive and welcome development.
Chairman:On behalf of the committee, I thank Ms O'Connell and Mr. Richmond for attending today's meeting and for their presentations and answers to our questions. We wish you all the best in your future work and look forward to meeting with you again in the near future.