Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Thank you very much. To bring matters to a conclusion, this was a very interesting engagement and I thank our guests for their expertise and for sharing with us the experience of their work over a number of years. In particular, I thank Ms Mateus Parra for joining us from Colombia and for sharing with us the first-hand experience there. I also again thank Ms Tunney, Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Walsh. This is important information for the committee in terms of our engagement. As regards next steps, we will start by writing, as Deputy Brady suggested earlier, to the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment informing him of our engagement with you and of the importance of having a more robust framework. We will inform him that the committee has formed and agreed a strong view that a more robust legislative framework is appropriate and necessary and that perhaps we should not wait for the European Union to give leadership here but embark on a process ourselves. We will write to him in the first instance and then act on whatever response we receive. We will also contact our colleagues in the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and inform them of our engagement with the coalition and suggest that they may wish to take up matters, as we have done. As Mr. Walsh suggested, we will write to the Minister for Justice and to the Department of Foreign Affairs, with which we have regular engagement in any event.

I will be happy to share the responses we receive with Ms Tunney and perhaps in the course of spring in the new year we might be in a position to chart a more direct course or avenue towards how best we might address matters further. In the meantime, if there are reports or further information Ms Tunney believes would be helpful to the committee in terms of our engagement, we would be happy to hear from her in that regard.

I thank our guests for being with us. My apologies again for not having an in-person meeting, but notwithstanding that I believe we had a fine engagement. I thank our technical people for the manner in which they managed to facilitate this important meeting, which proceeded without a technological hitch. Most importantly, our guests' presentation has been very well received by the committee and I know from the contributions of members that the committee will be keen to advance matters in accordance with the information provided to us.