Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Thank you very much for your kind words, Chairman. I am delighted to be with the committee members. My appearance at the committee is striking for two reasons - at least, it is striking for me - the first being that I spent seven very happy years working with it on matters about which we were concerned. I had the privilege of being a member of the committee as a Senator and then being its Vice Chairman.

I then worked with some members, most notably Deputy Timmy Dooley, on an Oireachtas sub-committee in which I was involved while serving as a Senator. It is a real privilege for me to be present working with members in my new role.

Another reason my appearance before the committee is particularly striking for me is that today is my birthday. I could not think of a nicer group of people with whom I would want to spend the afternoon of my birthday and if that does not get our relationship off to a good start, I am not sure what will. On that relationship, I wish to make clear a couple of points. I note the value with which I hold the committee and with which I accord my ability to work effectively with members. In this regard, this meeting is an opportunity to speak to members about both the forthcoming General Affairs Council, GAC, meeting and what my priorities will be as Minister of State. In the weeks since my appointment I have had the opportunity to consult colleagues and stakeholders and have a discussion on what I believe my important priorities should be and on how I will deliver on them. That is now clear in my mind and while there will be little in the discussion I will have with members that will surprise or be new to them, this is the first place in which I will have that discussion. I have not spoken about my priorities elsewhere since my appointment and it is appropriate that the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs be the place within which these priorities and ideas are enunciated and I have the opportunity to talk to members, get their feedback on them and hear what areas they believe are particularly important. In the time available to me I also wish to address that issue and to make a few comments on where the European Union stands. Previous summits the committee has discussed have been characterised by the frequency of economic crises and difficulty. Recent weeks and months have I hope provided some signs on where the European Union, its institutions, peoples and economy stand. I also wish to make some overall comments in that regard.

Before turning to those areas, I will take up the committee's invitation to speak about the forthcoming General Affairs Council. I make the point that I am speaking to members a considerable time before the meeting takes place. Consequently, a fair amount of detail will only be filled in between now and the actual Council meeting. This is because some decisions have yet to be taken. If any member probes or asks me about these particular points, I simply will be obliged to acknowledge them and state that when there is greater clarity on how matters have progressed before the meeting, I will be in a better position to address such questions and appear again before the committee.

The forthcoming General Affairs Council is notable for being the first formal General Affairs Council meeting that will take place as a Union of 28 member states. Many members were highly supportive of the accession of Croatia to the European Union and I had an opportunity to meet my new colleague at the informal meeting that took place in Vilnius at the end of August. The value Croatia accords to membership of the European Union is greatly striking both because of the journey it has made to get to that point and because of the value it believes such membership to have. I will take the opportunity to formally indicate how warmly the Government welcomes Croatia to the European Union and state it looks forward to working with it. I have alluded to the point that the forthcoming gathering of the General Affairs Council is not actually the first Lithuanian Presidency event for Ministers such as me. I attended the informal meeting the Presidency held at the end of August and I will return to that meeting presently.

As for the GAC agenda which has been circulated to members, the main item for discussion at the meeting is the cohesion policy legislative package. Members are aware that one of the main roles of such meetings is to prepare the agenda for the subsequent European Council meeting, that is, the meeting of the Heads of Government and State. The General Affairs Council plays a key role in preparing the agenda for that meeting. I do not need to tell this committee about the huge importance of the European Union’s cohesion spending or policy for the Union or Ireland. It lies at the heart of the jobs and growth agenda for the Continent in the future, just as it has been a primary instrument in the past in ensuring counrties such as Ireland can prosper and make the most of the opportunities the European Union can afford to them. In the future it will be one of the primary instruments available to the Union to drive investment and promote growth and job creation. As I have emphasised, the Government is well aware of the value of this policy, its investment and the big difference it has made to Ireland. It is expected that during the lifetime of the forthcoming programme Ireland will receive approximately €1 billion in Structural Funds between the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF, and the European Social Fund, ESF. Notably, I acknowledge the special provisions of €100 million for the Border, midlands and western region and €50 million for the PEACE programme which the Government secured in the negotiations on the multi-annual financial framework, MFF.

In the forthcoming discussion the focus will be on finalising the package of cohesion-related legislative instruments on which the Irish Presidency had been leading until the summer. As many members will be aware, during that period the Irish Presidency made significant progress in advancing this dossier and, in particular, the negotiations with the European Parliament. An enormous effort went into this, for which I thank everyone involved. It consisted of almost 90 trilogues under the Irish Presidency alone across the six files that comprise the legislative package. This is very technical with links to the multi-annual financial framework and the logistical challenges of dealing with six separate parliamentary negotiating teams. Under Ireland's chairmanship, the Council endorsed agreements reached between the Parliament and the Irish Presidency on four of the regulations that form part of the overall €325 billion package of cohesion funding. Agreement was also reached on 90% of the key common provisions regulations. In addition, agreement was reached on a key element of the European Social Fund regulation, namely, a minimum share for the ESF. However, our colleagues in the Lithuanian Presidency still have a number of significant issues to be addressed, most notably on macroeconomic conditionality and the performance reserve, both of which are related to the multi-annual financial framework. The priorities for the different funds will be threefold, namely, combating long-term and youth unemployment and social exclusion, the promotion of research and development investment and the competitiveness of the business sector and the promotion of an environmentally-friendly and resource-efficient economy.

The ERDF funding primarily will be allocated for research and innovation, supporting SMEs and energy efficiency, while the ESF funding will support important human capital programmes in the labour market such as upskilling and activation measures. Consideration will also be given to supporting territorial co-operation programmes such as the PEACE and INTERREG programmes. Given the importance of cohesion spending for the growth agenda, I wish the Lithuanian Presidency the best of luck in making progress on this programme. It will be crucial for agreement to be reached on the nuts and bolts behind all of these programmes in order that member states, obviously including Ireland, can get on with spending and investing this money on the important priorities.

The next item on the GAC agenda is the formal presentation of the annotated draft agenda for the October European Council. In this regard, I reiterate that one of the main roles of the General Affairs Council is to prepare the agenda for the European Council. In the outline work programme for the European Council up to 2014 President Van Rompuy has earmarked the digital agenda and innovation policy for attention at the October meeting. In so far as the digital agenda is concerned, members will recall that the compact for growth and jobs sets the clear objective of having a well functioning digital single market by 2014. This is an area in which important progress was made during the Irish Presidency, including taking forward work on the collective rights management, data protection and e-identification files.

We also hosted a very successful Digital Agenda Assembly in Dublin Castle at the end of June. As signalled in her contribution to the Digital Agenda Assembly, the Commissioner, Ms Kroes, produced important proposals on 12 September for the development of a single telecommunications market. These are positioned as a key enabler for further development of the digital economy. In so far as innovation policy is concerned, the key contribution of the Irish Presidency was, of course, finalisation of the political agreement on the €70 billion Horizon 2020 package under the new MFF. The next step is to seek to maximise the impact of what will be the world's largest public research programme. This agenda for the October European Council will be available on Monday. The final item is a possible update from the Lithuanian Presidency on files in the co-decision process with Parliament, which is a useful reference list, but not intended for any discussion.

I stated at the outset that I wanted to give the committee an update on the discussion that took place in the informal meeting in which I participated in Vilnius at the end of August. The theme of that discussion is something that this committee has grappled with and discussed over the past number of years. The two themes were clear and straightforward; first, how do we ensure democratic accountability of European political institutions; and second, how can we promote greater public engagement in EU affairs. These are vital issues all the time but they are hugely important now in the run-up to the European Parliament elections next summer. The informal meeting in Vilnius focused very much on these issues in the context of those elections but also, importantly, in the context of relations between the Council and the European Parliament after the summer elections.

Under the terms of the Lisbon treaty, the European Parliament has been given increased capacity in many areas that matter deeply to citizens, and a subject of discussion was how that capacity would be exercised in the future, what the role of the Parliament would be, how the MEPs would exercise their responsibilities and how Council would respond. A theme of the discussion that took place was the declining voter turnout at recent European elections. There was broad agreement on the need to communicate actions taken at EU level to citizens between now and the poll in order to reverse this trend. The benefits of EU membership are all too often taken for granted - for example, the Single Market and the role that European institutions play in the national economy and in protecting countless jobs across Ireland and the EU. In other words, we must find a way of focusing the debate on the bread-and-butter issues impacting on citizens' lives rather than on institutional discussions that mean little to them. I am of the view that we should ban the use of the word "institution" in public discussions. Given everything in which Europe is involved and given the role that the national Parliament plays within it, we need to refocus on language that is meaningful to citizens. We in Ireland are best positioned to do that because of the role of referendums in our decision making, but we will all be aware that when we talk to those we represent about issues such as the two-pack, the six-pack, automaticity, the Stability and Growth Pact and trialogue, we wonder what they mean to them. Of course we know about the outputs; what matters to people is their lives, their health, their work and their ability to access work. However, I am struck by how much time we spend talking about the inputs and processes involved, as opposed to the outputs of all of this work, which makes a difference to people and which we know they all care about. These issues will also feature prominently in COSAC meeting discussions next month under the Lithuanian Presidency, which I will miss attending, because I always found them informative and interesting. I am sure the committee will continue to play an important role in it.

The core theme of my contribution in that meeting was the role of the European Parliament. The point that I underscored to colleagues is that, while we all appreciate the increased role of the European Parliament under the Lisbon treaty, when a country is involved in delivering a Presidency, the Parliament and the amount of time one must spend with the Parliament become exceptionally important. The Parliament's role in co-decision making and in all the different ways in which decisions are made is immensely important, and a point we made is that this needs to be recognised in terms of time set aside as colleagues prepare for and deliver future Presidencies.

We also had a discussion on the idea of how we can ensure respect for the institutional - there I am, using the word "institution" again - balance laid out in the treaties regarding who should do what and how, and how to ensure that the roles that different persons play are in accordance with the roles assigned to them under the treaties for which the people have voted. This is something on which I and everybody else who contributed on that day focused.

I look forward to attending the next plenary session of the European Parliament in October and to meeting key contacts to underline the priority that the Government attaches to the European Parliament and to the main issues on which it is working that are crucial to the national interest, such as the MFF, completion of the banking union and agreement on legislation that supports growth and job creation.

I have already mentioned the October European Council on the digital agenda and innovation policy for Europe. The themes of the European Council in December will be enlargement, defence and the report from President Van Rompuy on economic and monetary union.

As the committee will be aware, the focus of the European semester in the second half of the year is on national implementation of the country-specific recommendations through the budget processes, which, of course, is one of the reasons our budget will be held sooner this year. The European semester is all about how national budgets are put together and the role of others in having a look at those budgets and understanding the impact they will have on their own economy and the economy across Europe. This is a new system. It is one with which we in Ireland are familiar regarding the discussion on the fiscal governance treaty last year. The operation of the European semester in the first half of the year will be subjected to a review and a lessons-learned paper will be produced and brought to the General Affairs Council in November-December. The Irish Presidency's management of the semester process in the first half of 2013 was successful, but in a new and complex process it is helpful to review and refine procedures for the following year, and the GAC will do this.

On enlargement, the accession of Croatia to the Union was a great start to this six-month period. In the lead-up to consideration at the December European Council, the Lithuanian Presidency will have to see what progress can be made on advancement with Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. The enlargement package will be published in October, with draft Council conclusions discussed at the October GAC.

Finally, the GAC is scheduled to consider the draft directive on maritime spatial planning in November, with the aim of agreeing a general approach on the text for future negotiations with the European Parliament. The Greek Presidency in 2014 will then lead the negotiations with the Parliament.

I am happy to listen to the views of members of this committee on the General Affairs Council agenda, and to answer questions in that regard as well as I can. I am conscious of how long I have been speaking but I want to conclude with some observations on the areas on which I want to work that I have identified as being priorities for my time in this role, which I look forward to speaking to the committee about in the weeks and months to come. There are four areas that I have identified as being both appropriate to this role and essential to delivering the programme for Government commitments that are laid down with regard to our engagement with Europe and the engagement of our institutions - there I go again - of Parliament here in Ireland with Europe. The first, an obvious one but one that we know really matters, is effective representation through ministerial engagements and public diplomacy.

That means that throughout the coming months I will be a frequent visitor to the European Parliament during plenary session. In my earlier contribution I identified for members the important role the European Parliament is playing and will play. By attending frequently during plenary session, I will have the opportunity to meet contacts in the European Parliament and make advances on issues we know to be important and in the national interest. Alongside this, I will be representing the country with the Tánaiste at the General Affairs Council and travelling with both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to various meetings. In particular, I will be travelling to the European Council meetings with the Taoiseach. I look forward to engaging at these meetings and with public media. In my first foray abroad, when I visited Copenhagen, I spent some of the afternoon in a discussion with Danish media on what was happening regarding Ireland’s engagement with the European Union. I outlined the difficulties we had in talking about the European Union and what we did well when we talked about it at home. I was delighted to participate in a radio interview in that regard and I am looking forward to visiting Lisbon next Tuesday. I will be participating in a conference with journalists on what is happening in Ireland and the work that is under way.

The second area of great importance is cross-government engagement and work. Simply put, what matters very much to all of us stretches across more than one Department in terms of how we engage with the European Union. My colleagues from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are the key people in developing and implementing our cohesion policy. Their work has considerable consequences for other Departments. Work on which we are engaging in the European Union on unemployment, including youth unemployment, and the digital economy stretches across more than just one Department. I will have a role in accelerating the work of our engagement group to ensure we can identify cross-departmental priorities and work on and communicate them effectively.

The third area on which I want to touch is our proposals and scrutiny by our national Parliament of EU directives. I spent the morning in the Seanad debating a directive on child pornography and the dissemination over the Internet of images of violence against children. I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with the Chairman and colleagues on our scrutiny processes, as they stand, particularly the change we have made regarding sectoral evaluation. Transport issues, for example, will be handled by the committee responsible for transport, as opposed to the committee responsible for European scrutiny, as was the case when Deputy Bernard J. Durkan was Chairman.

The final area I have identified is public understanding of the European Union. I want to examine what we are doing in regard to the Blue Star Programme for primary schools and how it can be developed and strengthened. I will be looking forward to many public engagements on how we talk about the European Union to the people, schools, trade unions, businesses and academics. I am particularly conscious of the view people hold on the European Union because I was involved in work on this issue a number of years ago. I refer to people younger than me who may have a different view on the European Union than the one I held when I grew up. They look at debates and events in the European Union very differently from previous generations.

I have identified the four areas on which I want to focus. While I am conscious that there is nothing that will come as a surprise to any of the members, I have made a point of making the committee the first place at which I have talked about my objectives. Thus, members know where I am coming from.

The other area that will be of real interest to me, on which I touched publicly, is the debate in the United Kingdom on the European Union. We should be very clear that Ireland, as a country that regularly holds referendums, recognises fully the right of any other country to do exactly the same as us. However, I hope to work with members publicly on the consequences for Ireland of a debate in another country on future membership of the European Union. What could it mean? What will happen is unclear, for very obvious reasons. So much is contingent on the composition of the next UK Parliament and who will be in government. I will emphasise again that we recognise and appreciate the need for other countries to have such debates and make their own decisions, but in doing so we must not be blind to the fact that decisions other countries make can have considerable consequences for us. We are well capable of engaging publicly in the necessary nuanced manner.

I have outlined the various blocks of work on which I hope to follow up. I thank members for giving me the opportunity to attend. I am sorry I have spoken for so long, but this is my first time here. I will do my best to be briefer in the future.