Mr. Neale Richmond:

Absolutely. The fiscal stability treaty chapter was taken from a wider report of 25 pages to 30 pages that we published within a week of the referendum result last year. As outlined in the report, it is not our opinion. It is based on the public opinion that was displayed either in the press or on public websites. It is a review of the campaign based on public sources. We appreciate that it is probably a bit too subjective. Much of the content was not our words. We just collated the information available. Most of it was taken together. We do a morning media watch service whereby we go through all media service to see who is talking about Europe, and then we collect the information and send it out to our members and anyone who wants to subscribe. That is essentially what we felt was coming across as the themes of the campaign as reported in the media. Some of the lines were direct quotes. We had quotations in the wider report but in the condensed version we just collected the information into the ten pages available.

In response to Senator Leyden, it is every editor’s nightmare to see one has made an error but the Joe O’Reilly of Fianna Fáil is indeed Deputy Joe O’Reilly of Fine Gael from Cavan-Monaghan. I apologise heartily to him. He is referred to as “Joseph O’Reilly” in the official Council of Europe documentation so that is why I reported him as “Joseph” as opposed to “Joe”.

There were no Oireachtas Members on the European Economic and Social Committee, EESC, because it is a non-parliamentary body. It is composed of people from various interest groups in the sector. I am most interested in the point made about the Council of Europe and down days. It is not fair to report on attendance in that regard. That is a point that was made to us by many MEPs, especially in regard to their attendance in Strasbourg. The Thursday is very much a travel day and the fact that there are no direct flights from Dublin to Strasbourg means that, as with the Council of Europe, one has to go to Baden-Baden, Frankfurt or Paris. We appreciate that and we will definitely put that caveat into next year’s report.