Professor John O'Brennan:

Going back to the failure of the Nice referendum, the Government introduced the National Forum on Europe. Deputy Howlin and others were involved with that. I had the feeling as time went on that it became more and more a closed shop where we were all talking to each other. That was not how it was initially. There were genuinely open and fresh proceedings. Prior to the Covid, the citizens' dialogues the Government set up with the European Movement and other bodies were going around the country. The model they employed was a very good one. The French European affairs minister visited when Deputy McEntee was Minister of State with responsibility for European Affairs. We had approximately 300 students in a room in Maynooth University. The French delegation was astonished that we were capable of getting that many students in to talk about the European Union. Because they were impressed by the citizens' dialogue model, they introduced something similar and began to roll it out in France. Covid interrupted all of that. I hope we will get back to some kind of model where we could at least have regular conversations in the community about sectoral-specific policies that impact on communities, and that we would try to reach out to communities as much as possible. In other words, I hope that when we come to another referendum, it will not be like cramming for an exam. That is not healthy for anyone. I hope people will have a base of knowledge and are confident about going into the ballot box to exercise the franchise.