Mr. Proinsias De Rossa:

I will try not to cover everything. The Chairman asked about my suggestion that the committee should consider hearings or a hearing for the nominee to the Commission. This should also be considered for other matters, which I will touch on. He asked whether this would lead to a circus. It seems to me, from observing the Dáil over the past couple of years, that the committee system in the Dáil has matured enormously and there have been quite a number of hearings on very technical and, indeed, highly volatile subjects that have been remarked upon as a model of how it should be done. I believe that provided such a hearing is structured to ensure the questioning relates to the criteria required of a Commissioner, there should not be any problem.

From participating in hearings, I know that what is done in the Parliament is the political groups produce a list of questions they would like to have put to the nominee. Given the size of the Parliament, one also has to nominate the people who will put the questions, and time is allocated and so on. It is a highly structured affair but it is very effective. I would instance the fact that Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who was nominated as Commissioner by the last Government, did exceptionally well in the hearings and has proven to be a good Commissioner in terms of doing the job she was sent out to do. To quote Article 17.3 of the Lisbon treaty, it states: "The members of the Commission shall be chosen on the ground of their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt". Therefore, independence, competence and commitment to the objectives of the European Union are the issues, not whether, if they were former Ministers, Deputies or Senators, they let this or that one down, or whatever. That is out of order. The questions relate to competence and independence. A good question would be, "Will they act independently of all governments, including the Irish Government?", which is key to the collegiality of the Commission. I have no doubt this committee could do that.

The issue of the Presidency of the Commission is equally important. A new system is coming into place this year whereby, under the treaty, the Council has to consult with the Parliament about who it wants for President of the Commission. That is completely new and has not been the case before. As a consequence of that, virtually all of the political groups in the Parliament are putting forward a nominee for the Presidency of the Commission. Martin Schulz has been put forward by the Socialist group, of which I was a member, and Guy Verhofstadt is being put forward by the Liberal group, of which Fianna Fáil is a member. I do not know who the EPP nominee is at this point - it may be the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, for all I know. However, the point is that we need a commitment from all of the governments.

We are concerned here with the Irish situation. We need a commitment from the Irish Government that it will insist this is done, and that the Council will not go in behind closed doors and make its own choice, have a few perfunctory consultations with the Parliament and then just disclose the name. If that is the case, the likelihood is that, no matter how good the person is, if it does not reflect the vote of the people in the elections, the person will be rejected and we will have a crisis. It is very important this is addressed.

We touched on the identification of MEPs, which is a perennial problem. It is not so much a problem for councillors or Deputies because they are on the ground all the time and live in their areas. MEPs spend four weeks of the month, 11 months of the year, not on the ground. They are dependent to a large extent on what the media has to say about them, and in most cases the media has nothing to say about them, good, bad or indifferent. We would be delighted if they would attack us occasionally just to get a bit of attention - I am speaking in the past, of course. I can recall speaking in the Seanad on the European Convention and what was being proposed in the draft treaty. I think I was the first MEP ever to speak in the Seanad but there was not a single word in any of the national print media or RTE. It is not that I particularly wanted it, but I thought that, as an event, it would have been something of significance, given it was the first attempt at the Lisbon treaty.

On the issue of substitutes, the last thing we need are European Parliament by-elections, which would be horrendous. Therefore, either there is a substitute or we go for the full-on list system. One reform might be that the name of the substitute would be printed on the ballot paper, which would make it very long but would in some way let the electorate, which will vote for its preferred candidate, know they are also voting for B, C, D and E as well.

Senator Kathryn Reilly raised the question of voting in the European Parliament. There are anything up to 1,000 votes a week in the Parliament in Strasbourg on all the different sections. There can be an objection to a particular paragraph or line in a report which might run to ten pages. If MEPs agree broadly with the report, they vote for the report, although they may have an exception to that point. Therefore, I would not take a vote for a final report as a vote for a particular dimension of that report, as one would need to dig more to see if there was any explanation of votes and what the MEPs did to signal their unhappiness with it. I have to say that sometimes, because there are 1,000 votes, MEPs vote for some things that, if they knew they were there, they would not vote for. That is the reality as well, because they are only human.

I will leave it at that, although there are many other issues I could touch on.