Mr. Francis Jacobs:

-----or there would be one for the whole country. The only reason I mentioned that is that I remember the late Brian Lenihan giving a talk in our building and saying that maybe one day that will happen. The assumption is that the constituencies will continue but the basis on which it will do comes under purely national competence.

There was a long debate in the European Parliament about having a uniform electoral system and it was abandoned because there were too many differences between the member states. The compromise reached was that there should be a few key principles which were common such as proportionality, which is why the British eventually had to abandon the first past the post system for the European elections, as it was distorting the political balance in the European Parliament. In 1979 there were 22 Conservatives more than they would have been proportionally. The Conservatives were not too worried about that but in 1994 when there were 20 more socialists because the British Labour Party got 60 out of the 75 seats, or whatever number it was, the Conservatives started to take it seriously and it was later changed during Tony Blair's period as Prime Minister. The principle of each system had to be proportional but it was up to each member state whether to have a single transferable vote, open lists, closed lists and so on.

An idea that was put forward but which has not gone anywhere, which Andrew Duff, the rapporteur, and some other members, have long advocated, is that, in addition to the individual member states, there should be one Europe-wide constituency where candidates who would stand at a Europe-wide level. However, that idea was dropped in favour of the idea of having candidates for President of the Commission for the obvious reason that it would mean that countries like Ireland and others would have even fewer seats. There is great reluctance to go down that route, although some people have posed the question, would that not give a more European flavour to the elections, but others have said the European Union is not ready for that, that is not yet a federal system and therefore that would be too federal an element. That idea, which has been put forward by some in the Parliament, has never had a majority. I cannot envisage it having a majority in the foreseeable future but some members have advocated it.

Deputy Donohoe's questions are difficult ones for me to answer because treaty change in the past has typically happened in a very ad hoc way. A series of demands built up for areas where problems emerged for a country or a group of countries and eventually there was a compromise where a number of these concerns were put together and it was decided to draw up a treaty. There was not a master plan to provide that this is what we need to do at European level. It has been very much an ad hoc process and this may have been part of the problem of getting the public on-side. There was an attempt to get away with that in the Constitutional Convention held a few years ago when John Bruton was on the presidium, Dick Roche was the Government representative, Proinsias De Rossa was another member and John Gormley was there as well. It was a mixture of national and European parliamentarians who examined the structure of the European Union to see where treaty changes needed to be made. There are still many people in the Parliament who like this method of debate between the European Parliament and national parliaments - rather than it being decided by executives - on what does and not does not need to be changed and putting that forward for the future. The discussion currently tends to be, as the Deputy said, on a complete banking union, Angela Merkel saying that we need a treaty change to do that and other members saying what we should do on another area. This is currently done on an ad hoc basis. The only thing on which the Parliament is very strong and, I am sure, on which the committee would be very strong, is that whatever changes are needed they need to strengthen this democratic accountability element. That is critical if European citizens are to be brought on board.

The Deputy also mentioned the public perception of the European Parliament. One may or may not like opinion polls. We have a very regular measure of this; the Eurobarometer does a series of polls, many of which ask questions about faith and trust in the European institutions, including the European Parliament. We also have our own small opinion poll unit. It does not do its own polls but it helps to commission some, focusing more particularly on the role of the European Parliament. I am happy to share with the committee the work with which it comes up. Unsurprisingly, it shows that the economic crisis has led to a drop in the support for and popularity of all the European Union institutions and the EU as a whole - the Parliament, the Commission and the Council are all less trusted than they were a few years ago. An interesting consideration is that when there is economic recovery, will that change and, if so, how quickly? The biggest problem the European Parliament has is its distance from citizens. It has very great powers.

As the Deputy said, there are 11 Irish MEPs who have to cover the whole range of European Parliament activities which are becoming increasingly complex. They have to meet and look after their constituents and attend committee meetings and plenary sessions, and that is the same for all members of the European Parliament. They have to look after the home base, take part in an increasingly difficult legislative and non-legislative control and accountability work and inevitably sometimes citizens find that they are a bit remote.

There is a wider problem of trust in the whole political process, therefore, the turnout in elections has decreased in even national elections, but it is something of which we must be very aware. As the European Parliament has got more powerful, the turnout in elections has tended to go down rather up. A key factor recently has been the big enlargement in 2004 where a large number of new member states joined. The turnout in even national elections in some of the new member states have been very low and they have been new lows. One of the new member states has only a 17% turnout in the last European Parliament elections and that brought down the overall turnout considerably. That member state was Slovakia. The percentage turnout in Poland was in the low 20s. Of the older member states, the only one in which the turnout has been consistently at a very low level is the United Kingdom, where the turnout has fluctuated between 24% and 36%.