Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Sherlock has made some interesting points. However, I can envisage that there are views expressed by the socialist group in the European Parliament which Deputy Sherlock would not propagate in Ireland and which his party would not support. We should all be careful in quoting fellow members of our group. I met Mr. Lyon when he visited Ireland along with Irish MEPs from that committee and we had a detailed discussion in which he indicated his agreement with our position on many of the issues contained in our submission. He also met the farming organisations during his visit and I found, when I met the presidents of those organisations that evening on other business, that they were relatively pleased with their discussions with him. In fairness, he was acting as rapporteur for the agriculture committee in drawing up the report to which the Deputy referred and not all of its contents would necessarily represent his own view point. We have been engaging in the co-decision making process, which is a whole new ball game for everybody involved in decision making. It is no longer down to the Council of Ministers on its own. As a Department we have been actively involved in briefing all our MEPs on these important issues.

With regard to the historic camp, more people have moved away from it. There are not many of us steadfastly in support of the historic model. We are doing analysis of the different models in terms of how they would affect us and how we would lose and benefit from different systems. I could offer a briefing to the party spokespersons, on a confidential basis for the moment, as we continue to do in terms of their work on the different models but there are so many variations and proposals put forward and there is huge pressure coming from the 12-----

See this speech in context