Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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To follow up on the input from other members, the witnesses said the accountability campaign is one of their flagship advocacy programmes. If we look at any statistics on that we could balance them either way. The difficulty with all of this is that people become defensive and say they have a reason they were not there and so on. I am probably one of the worst attenders at these meetings but I can look at myself in the mirror and justify where I am in that regard. I am not swanning off somewhere else. I may be at another meeting or whatever but when I do come along to the meetings, I try to have an input into them. That is the important part of what we are doing here.

People would tell me that they do not see me attending Leaders' Questions but one might be at a Good Friday Agreement committee meeting, a foreign affairs committee meeting or some other meeting.

People say when one is not present that one must not be doing anything. That feeds into the negativity people have towards politicians in that regard.

There is a pattern of people staying away from elections. It is not just the election to the European Parliament, it was the same with the local elections and the by-elections. A pattern is emerging in that regard.

Reference was made to the attendance of the Taoiseach and other Ministers at pre-European Council meetings. We have pre-Council meetings and post-Council meetings. The format is that the Taoiseach makes a speech and then the Opposition leaders and perhaps a Minister of State. When Deputy Eamon Gilmore was Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, he summarised matters. That is the current format, but one could ask whether it is making the process more-----