Ms Noelle O'Connell:

I thank the committee for the questions. I will begin with Deputy Calleary's question about the 20% awareness. He asked how confident and hopeful of success we are and queried whether we have failed before we start. I want to be a glass half-full person. There is a real opportunity, and not only that. If not now, when? Because of the Covid pandemic, what we have seen, as Professor Laffan has mentioned, through digital platforms is a greater availability and opportunity to engage people and increase that knowledge and dialogue. We know from what we have seen and from our experience that Ireland cannot afford to take the foot off the pedal. We have seen across the water that 40 years of negative discourse and diatribe cannot be reversed in a six-week referendum campaign. It proved impossible.

What is vital in terms of the Conference on the Future of Europe is to keep the momentum going and ensure the public in Ireland are informed and engaged. In our Red C poll, 84% of people in Ireland wanted Ireland to remain a member of the EU and only 7% felt that it was not in our interest to remain a part of it. There is an increasing awareness and appreciation of the value and importance of our membership of and relationship with the EU, but we cannot afford to take that support and engagement for granted, and nor can we afford to take it lightly. That is why it is so important to maintain the momentum we built up during the citizens' dialogues. The Government, the Oireachtas and the committee have a unique opportunity to seize that momentum and harness those synergies to ensure that the Conference on the Future of Europe taking place in Ireland is meaningful, that it matters and that we contribute as a country to how we see the EU and how we see our role and place in it.

On Deputy Richmond's question of fearing treaty change, an organisation such as European Movement Ireland has a strong track record of engaging and dealing with the nine EU referendums we have had in this country. We should not necessarily fear it, but nor should it be the optimal solution. The outcomes and the outputs are more important. The whole process of that debate is meaningful and adds value to citizens in Ireland and across the EU. We should not get too hung up on the technicalities. It should not be a top-down initiative. It really has to be led by the citizens at the grassroots. That is what we saw, tangentially and concretely, when we were travelling around the country. People were motivated to come along, take part and have their say. Not everyone who participated was in favour of Ireland remaining a part of the EU but they all wanted to debate, engage and learn more about some of the key policy themes that will form the core part of the Conference on the Future of Europe. People left feeling that they were better informed and, crucially, that their opinion counted and was valued and that they had their say. If we can hang on to those key nuggets, that will make a success of the Conference on the Future of Europe. We say frequently that we have a tendency here to nationalise success and Europeanise failure. We do not want that to happen with the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Deputy Richmond asked where this process is at in other member states. Interestingly, my own umbrella organisation, European Movement International, holds its federal assembly this week. I would normally be in Berlin for the next three days, as it is the German Presidency, but instead we are all coming together digitally. For Professor Laffan's information, it is taking place over Zoom this year.

It is interesting to see where our fellow European movements and national councils are in terms of the whole Conference on the Future of Europe. There is an impatience. Equally, there is a sense of urgency that the conference must start while recognising that the EU institutions, quite honestly, did not have the bandwidth to initiate this Europe-wide debate on the Conference on the Future of Europe against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic. Interestingly, since the time of the Juncker Commission, that is, preceding the term of the current President of the Commission, Dr. von der Leyen, but also including it, the European Commission has been involved in 1,570 citizen dialogues across the different member states. Almost 200,000 citizens across EU member states have taken part in those European Commission-led dialogues.

What we are seeing now is the different countries putting forward their own proposals. It is a little ad hocat present. Once the conference gets formally started and once the impetus and momentum officially kicks in and is instigated, the buy-in is there and it is officially launched, we hope we will see an increase in our figure of 20% of people in Ireland being aware of it and we will have an opportunity to participate. Equally, and in response to Deputy Calleary's well-made point about respect for the rule of law, we need to get our own house in order to ensure the means and mechanisms are in place institutionally to allow such a conference to take place in a meaningful way across all member states.

What we do not want is buy-in and support from particular member states and for others not to be fully engaged. This is about every one of the more than 450 million citizens of the Union. It is going to affect all citizens of the EU and it is important that they all feel they have a voice in their respective member states and an opportunity to engage meaningfully in the future direction of the Union.