Mary Henry (Independent)

As all Senators have to declare their interests when they speak in the House, I must do so now. I walk along the South Wall in Dublin with Ms Mary Banotti most Sunday mornings. We settle all EU matters as part of our conversations. I am to blame, therefore, for some of the problems in which she has been involved. I thought it was interesting when Ms Banotti mentioned that although there are 19 committees, Irish MEPs were initially involved mainly with the agriculture committee. She was involved with the environment committee. It is considerably difficult for the smaller countries to ensure they can spread their MEPs over all the committees. The big countries have far more MEPs, but Ireland will now have fewer. Ms Banotti is right in saying that whenever things have gone wrong, it has been useful to be able to blame Europe, such as the problem pertaining to the caper jar, but we have improved matters by having a committee to scrutinise European legislation. It was decided to establish it following an address by a Dane to the National Forum on Europe, chaired by Senator Maurice Hayes. However, there continues to be appalling difficulties in getting support for research.