Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

The paper calls for the development of existing provisions on openness and public access, the inclusion of the Ombudsman in the new treaty – an important role left out of the treaty – and a specific treaty base allowing for the development of detailed rules of good practice in the administration of the Union's institutions. These are concrete suggestions which, if implemented, would help make the institutions of the Union more transparent and responsive from the citizen's perspective. Certainly, if they go half as far as we have gone, it will be a big improvement on where they are.

In recent months there has been quite an amount of ill-informed and rather unwarranted criticism of Ireland's approach to the Convention. While we have addressed this issue on a number of occasions, I was disappointed to see it re-emerge at last week's meeting of the Joint Committee on European Affairs with the Institute for European Affairs. I was particularly concerned at some extraordinary headlines that attached to one report of the meeting.

I take this opportunity to set out, once again, the steps being taken to ensure our efforts are wide-ranging at both political and official level. At Government level we have put in place arrangements to ensure Ireland's response to the Convention is as active, energetic and co-ordinated as possible. In this regard, Ireland was one of the first member states to submit its full responses on the original 16 articles. One or two of the larger member states have still not completed that work, two weeks after the deadline.

At the administrative level, my alternate to the Convention, Mr. Bobby McDonagh of the Department of Foreign Affairs, chairs an interdepartmental group involving all Departments which was established to ensure all Departments were kept informed of developments in the Convention. It is to meet later this week to discuss a wide range of issues.

Separately, I chair a Convention overview group comprising senior officials from the Departments most directly involved which meets weekly and examines developments in the Convention during the week that has passed and previews the coming week's developments. The report of the group is circulated on the Friday of each week with the Cabinet papers and each Minister is briefed. I also chair the interdepartmental co-ordinating committee on broader EU affairs where the impact of the Convention is further considered. The discussions at these groups are fed into the work of the Cabinet committee on Europe, which I attend, and, as appropriate, the Cabinet.