Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Niall Collins for the entertainment while I was shaving this morning. At least we are not debating the Seanad referendum at this meeting.

I am grateful to the joint committee for the invitation to brief members on both the recent Irish Presidency of the EU from a justice and home affairs perspective and on the matters that have been tabled for discussion at the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council, which will take place in Luxembourg on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I will be attending the Council meeting.

I will begin with a brief recap of the Irish Presidency with regard to justice and home affairs matters. I am pleased to report that the Presidency proved to be a great success. We managed to achieve our targets and, indeed, to exceed them in some cases.

I chaired a total of three meetings of the Council. An informal meeting of the Council was held in Dublin Castle in January and two formal Council meetings were held in March and June. As committee members will know, the overall theme of the Presidency was stability, jobs and growth within justice and home affairs with a sub-theme of justice for growth, a theme which is continuing to be developed by the incoming Presidency.

In this context, one of the top priorities for the Irish Presidency was advancing the data protection reform package. This comprises a regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and a directive on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data for the purposes of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties.

The Lisbon treaty contains a new legal base for EU data protection rules, while the Charter of Fundamental Rights enshrines protection of personal data as a fundamental right. Substantial progress was made, particularly on the data protection regulation, during the Presidency. An updated draft of Chapters 1 to 4 was published and general support secured for certain fundamental concepts and key aspects which will be an excellent basis for future work. In view of its importance, I arranged for the documents dealing with data protection that were submitted to the June Council meeting to be placed before both Houses on 25 June. Work is continuing on this issue under the Lithuanian Presidency and it is included in the agenda for the October Justice and Home Affairs Council for a further orientation debate. I will return to this matter when I outline the Council agenda for next week.

Data protection was not our only priority. In fact, the Irish Presidency had successes across the whole spectrum of justice and home affairs. The regulation providing for mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters was adopted, which means that civil protection measures such as barring orders can still be enforced where a victim moves from one member state to another. This is an important element of the victims package. In regard to human trafficking, the Presidency worked closely with the Commission on a user-friendly information package on the rights of victims of trafficking in the Union. Enhancing fundamental rights was a key focus of the Irish Presidency. The Council agreed to give further consideration to safeguarding fundamental rights and countering extreme forms of intolerance, such as racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and homophobia.

The internal security of the Union will always be a priority for any Presidency and Ireland maintained the fight against organised crime and terrorism. The March Council contained an extensive debate on the threat to internal security from the Sahel and Maghreb regions of Africa, with a particular focus on terrorism originating in Mali. The June Council focused on EU citizens travelling to third countries as foreign fighters, including those who have gone to Syria to engage in the civil war there. The Presidency obtained the agreement of the Council to revise its recruitment and radicalisation strategy.

In March 2013, the first serious and organised crime threat assessment was published by Europol. Based on that, the Irish Presidency secured agreement on the crime priorities for Europol for the next four-year policy cycle against organised crime. The Presidency also agreed the next four-year action plan on tackling the drugs problem.

Syria was a constant issue throughout the Presidency. In January, at the informal Council, I invited the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to participate in an important debate on the escalating humanitarian problem. That problem relates not only to the internal difficulties in Syria, but also the enormous refugee problem which continues to escalate. In terms of security, the issue of EU citizens heading to Syria as foreign fighters or jihadists became a major concern. In recent weeks we have seen that the problem is not confined to Syria.

In regard to asylum and migration, the Irish Presidency secured agreement on the two remaining elements of the common European asylum system. These two elements were the asylum procedures directive, which provides minimum standards on procedures for granting and withdrawing refugee status, and the Eurodac regulation, which relates to the system for comparing fingerprints of asylum seekers. The Presidency also reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on the regulation establishing a European border surveillance system, known as Eurosur. In terms of visa facilitation and readmission agreements, new agreements were signed with Moldova, Ukraine, Cape Verde and Armenia, and significant progress was made on an EU-Russia visa facilitation agreement.

A significant agreement was reached on the Schengen governance package. This package of two measures will enhance the security and stability of the border-free arrangements for participating states. The agreement also enabled progress on five files in the home affairs area in respect of which negotiations had been suspended by the European Parliament since June 2012. The Irish Presidency also oversaw the successful migration to the second generation of the Schengen information system, better known as SIS II.

In 2010, the European Commission estimated that more than €600 million of fraud was committed against the EU's financial interests. The Irish Presidency reached agreement on a general approach to a draft directive against fraud which aims to strengthen the legal arrangements already in place to protect the EU against fraud, corruption or money laundering.

At the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in June, political guidelines were agreed on the draft regulation on insolvency proceedings. These guidelines will inform the continuing negotiations on the regulation, which seeks to reform the existing EU insolvency law to reflect the fact that businesses increasingly have operations in more than one member state. Work was progressed on the European account preservation order, a cross-border debt recovery measure in civil and commercial matters. Finally, an agreement was reached with the European Parliament on the access to a lawyer dossier, which is part of the criminal justice procedural rights package. This is not the complete list of achievements during the course of the Irish Presidency but merely the most important highlights. I arranged for a note to be circulated to committee members outlining in more detail the issues addressed during the Presidency.

Turning to next week's Justice and Home Affairs Council agenda, I propose to concentrate on the main issues of substance for Ireland and provide a brief background on them. In addition, I will provide an indication of Ireland's position on the relevant issues, where applicable. I arranged last week for members of the committee to be furnished with information notes on agenda items for the Council. Members should note that, in some cases, the Presidency has yet to advise which particular matters are to be discussed under each agenda item. There is a possibility, in other words, that some of the specific issues might change prior to the meeting.

The provisional agenda does not present any major difficulties for Ireland. This is the first formal Justice and Home Affairs Council of the Lithuanian Presidency and will take place over two half-day meetings instead of the normal two full days. This might explain the shorter agenda than usual. The Presidency is using the two other half days for joint meetings of EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers with their counterparts from the Eastern Partnership countries. These meetings will take place outside of the Council framework. The Council will begin on Monday morning in the Justice formation and the first substantive issue for discussion is data protection. As I mentioned earlier, data protection was a priority during our Presidency and significant progress was achieved in that area. Discussions in the working group have now moved to the one-stop shop facility and Ireland is actively engaged in the ongoing work.

The one-stop shop principle is one of the central planks of the Commission proposal for a general data protection regulation. Where the processing of personal data by a controller or processor in the Union takes place in more than one member state, one single supervisory authority would be competent for monitoring the activities of the controller or processor throughout the Union. The idea here is to provide legal certainty and reduce administrative burdens for data controllers and processors. The competent authority providing the one-stop shop should be the supervisory authority of the member state in which the controller or processor has its main establishment. It is expected that the Council will focus on the implementation of this measure. There is an issue as to whether the supervisory authority in the state of establishment should have the exclusive jurisdiction to supervise all the processing activities of a company which has a presence in a number of member states and decide exclusively on all measures, including penalties. Ireland is supportive of the one-stop shop concept and will work with other member states to address any difficulties with its implementation. In addressing this issue, it is of course important to ensure that the data protection rights of individuals are protected under the revised arrangements.

The next item for discussion is a directive on the protection of the euro. Ireland has exercised its option under Article 3 of Protocol 21 to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to participate in this measure. This measure contains a requirement for member states to criminalise the making, import, export and passing of counterfeit currency as well as the possession of instruments for making currency. It is expected that the JHA Council will agree to a general approach based on a new revised text.

The next two proposals to be discussed were launched as a package by the Commission in July. The first of these is the proposed European public prosecutor's office and the second is the recast Eurojust proposal. This will be the first opportunity for Council to discuss these proposals. The first envisages an office headed by a European public prosecutor and assisted by four deputy prosecutors and a delegated prosecutor from each member state. The function of the office will be to prosecute crimes against the financial interests of the Union. The second proposal provides a new legal framework for Eurojust post-Lisbon. It aims to maintain the elements of Eurojust that have worked well and to streamline its structures in line with the Lisbon Treaty. It will also provide support for the new European public prosecutor's office. Ireland has until 22 November to exercise our options to participate in either or both of these measures under Protocol 21.

I am currently considering the approach Ireland should take to these proposals.

The Home Affairs Council will take place on Tuesday afternoon next. The first issue for discussion is to agree a temporary seat for the European Police College, CEPOL. The committee may be aware that the Commission separately published a proposal to merge CEPOL with Europol, which is based in The Hague. This proposed merger was rejected by ministers at the June Council meeting. At the same time, the UK has notified the Council that it is closing its police college at Bramshill, England. Bramshill is the current home of CEPOL and the UK has given the latter notice to vacate the premises by March 2014. Pending a permanent solution to the future governance arrangements for Europol and CEPOL, it is essential that CEPOL finds a new temporary home. I have informed member states that Ireland is willing to host CEPOL in the Garda training college in Templemore. Members will know that this is an excellent facility which, I believe, would more than adequately meet the needs of CEPOL. I should add that there is competition from six other member states to host CEPOL. I cannot predict the outcome with regard to this particular matter.

The next issue to be discussed is free movement. In April 2013, four Ministers from Germany, Austria, Netherlands and the UK wrote to the Council to highlight their concerns about the potential abuse of free movement rights by EU nationals seeking to avail of social welfare systems in certain member states. The Council discussed this matter in June during Ireland's Presidency and invited the Commission to examine the issues highlighted by the four member states concerned. The Council agreed that the Commission's free movement group would gather evidence and present interim findings at the October Council meeting.

The next item will be an update on the latest developments on the Syrian refugee crisis and the EU’s response to same. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people have lost their lives and that more than 6 million have been displaced. At least 2 million of those displaced are refugees currently living outside Syria, predominantly located in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq. There are approximately 40,000 Syrian refugees in Europe at present and the majority of them are living in Sweden and Germany. Conditions in refugee camps in the Middle East states to which I refer, including Turkey, are deteriorating and EU Ministers will consider what further action can be taken.

The final substantive item on the agenda is information from the Commission on the first annual relocation forum. Some EU member states have been disproportionately affected by the arrival of asylum seekers. The relocation programme is aimed at sharing the burden that arises in this context. The forum took place on 25 September and the Commission will report on progress made at that meeting.

I appreciate that I have addressed a large number of issues, some of which are particularly complex. I will be happy to address any questions members may wish to pose. Members may be interested in focusing on the meeting being held on Monday and Tuesday next. They may wish to voice queries or offer suggestions in respect of the issues which are due to be discussed. I will be happy to hear their views in that regard.