Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

I compliment Deputy Perry and the other members of the Joint Committee on European Affairs on this important and comprehensive report. It makes proposals on improving our work. I have always been an advocate of this process. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs I was concerned that we had insufficient resources to scrutinise and interpret the legislation with which we were charged. I feared that something might slip under the radar which would have an adverse impact further down the line. We would then be vulnerable to the charge that we were too lazy or incompetent to investigate matters properly. The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Roche, has a deep knowledge of this area and a drive to ensure it gets the respect and deliberation it deserves.

I concur with other speakers who have argued that committees do not receive sufficient publicity. We operate from the basement and start our work early in the morning. Sometimes we even miss votes in the Dáil, which probably leads observers to think we are missing and must be doing something else. We do important work but we get little credit for it. We are not looking for credit because we are paid for what we do but people do not even realise we are down in the bunker.

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