Ms Doyle, MEP:

Some 80% of legislation is now subject to co-decision. The permanent representative should be geared towards briefing the Irish MEPs to get the Irish position across and table the amendments before the committee concerned nails down the specifics. It goes to Council after committee and if the permanent representative was in the habit of advising the Council or the Minister, situations could be avoided where positions are taken at the committee stage that are very difficult to unravel. Ministers have been told, "Your MEPs never said that at committee, in fact, they voted unanimously for X and you now want Y", but that was because under the current co-decision ethos, we are not geared towards briefing the MEPs in the same way as other member states. We are more geared towards serving our Ministers. Successive Governments have done it that way but we need to keep our MEPs up to speed on the Irish position so that we are aware of a problem coming down the track or an issue that is of vital national interest to us.