Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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First of all, I welcome the Minister of State to the committee and it is good to see her in her new role and capacity. I also thank her, in particular, for opening up and talking about the journey of decisions. I think it is an area which is outside the remit of this committee but I feel that it is very complementary to it and could be strengthened in some of its earlier parts in the scrutiny of initial proposals.

Within committees that I am a member of, we have issued reasoned opinions and political opinions on matters, not solely on subsidiarity issues. That is at the point when there are ideas being proposed and floated and is when one can have a significant influence on them.

One thing that can sometimes hinder that is that we often find that the EU directive communications are arriving to the committees post the date of the decision having already been made. Even this week, we had a session where we would usually deal with our reasoned opinions and political opinions in private session and occasionally a matter will get public scrutiny. We had such an example in the finance committee this week where we had a session looking at an EU communication but the money had already been effectively allocated so the communication came to us too late for a reasoned opinion to influence the decision. It was regrettable because there were some significant concerns including subsidiarity and legal concerns. This is just an example of where we might be more effective. I know that on a few occasions the climate committee which I also sit on has also sent political opinions. I know they have been received well and that reports back from Europe indicate they have been regarded as being very useful.

There is, of course, an expertise in a sectoral committee and that is what the EU wants because when one talks to people on the future of Europe or to any person working within the Commission and as part of that process, they effectively want feedback on what will and will not work and why.

Moving forward to when directives and decisions have been made, there is still often a large number of opt-ins or opt-outs even within directives. There are interpretive choices which are left. One of the areas in which I have legislation myself is on public procurement. Again, certain choices were made by Ireland at that time where our public procurement was brought through by statutory instrument and regulation rather than by legislation partly, I think, because it fell between election cycles.

I know we are looking at legislation to see how you can work around choices that were made by, for example, building quality into public procurement in a stronger way. Important decisions are made even after a directive is finalised. I think this committee can give really useful direction in identifying statutory instruments which are coming through or which are planned. There is that early stage. As I said, there are a number of points of engagement. There is the point where we are told that a directive is coming and we engage with the Department about its plans, whether it will be primary legislation or a statutory instrument. It gives a sense of the direction it is going. More importantly, when there is a draft statutory instrument, we can bring it through. In certain cases, we may also happen to have been sitting on the committee that saw it at the early proposal stage, so we can bring knowledge from that.

I do not think there is any example yet of us having delayed any statutory instrument. In fact, I think as a committee that our role will maybe ensure more timely transposition because we are making those inquiries at an early stage. We will ask about the directive and whether it will be primary legislation or a statutory instrument. We will refer draft statutory instruments to sectoral committees where we feel that they need specific scrutiny, so we do not do the scrutiny ourselves per se, but we identify potential areas of concern and then we inform the relevant sectoral committee that there is this draft statutory instrument that we believe would merit its attention. Even prior to that, we are almost saying to sectoral committees, and have said in our communications, that in autumn this year, for example, they will likely be looking at a matter. We are almost building in that space in advance. We are trying to help the flow in that way.

The issue is that some Departments will prepare their statutory instruments in advance and some Departments will be very close to the deadline. I do not see our committee as a delay. If anything, I see our committee as a useful impetus for streamlining the process so that we see Departments preparing their statutory instruments in a timely way and benefiting, where relevant, from the scrutiny of a sectoral committee that can maybe add to that. That way, we may avoid errors in some cases, which is where infringement comes in, and in other cases, maybe non-optimum choices being made and a failure in some cases to be consistent with other areas of Government policy. If people say they have to do the statutory instrument and only have three or four weeks left, that is not the best work that we do. I see our committee as improving the timeliness, including through the fact that in our annual reports, we will be able to highlight if there are Departments which are not sending the instruments for scrutiny on time. It is often those same Departments that may be at risk of not getting them on time at all. I see us as a positive dynamic in pushing that forward. I have individual questions on individual statutory instruments that are pending but I will park some of the individual points or questions I have. I wanted to give others a chance to engage first.