Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

It is the gulag of the willing. God bless them — I hope my day will not come. My experience has been interesting in terms of operating it. We have, on occasion, chosen legislation and had it discussed by departmental officials. This has been beneficial, I suppose, but I do not believe it has had much real effect. The Minister and his or her Department officials pass over the information, there is a nice, gentle discussion for up to an hour, but as to whether this has any real effect, I do not really believe so. We never brought in witnesses. The system might start working if persons from outside a Department were brought in. That is something we should do more regularly.

On the one occasion we had direct experience of the European Union in my four years in the House, it was inadvertent. One of the Deputies opposite was seeking to make a point on fisheries so he brought in his friends, as I shall put it, from the European Parliament to back up an internal war that was going on between the Minister and himself. That actually proved to be useful because it meant the Members of the European Parliament who were involved in the fisheries group were present in the same room as Members of the Oireachtas who were responsible for fisheries. There was a good ding-dong. I pointed out that since an individual was present who was on the relevant committee at European level, he or she should be aware of such and such. He or she could then come back and say that we should know this and that. That is one structure in which this procedure might work better if we had formal arrangements whereby Irish MEPs were statutorily required to return here to parliamentary groups that mirror the same responsibilities and give quarterly reports.

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