Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

The Acting Chairman, Senator Higgins, has an interest in the upcoming European elections and the Clerk of the Seanad has a distinguished role to play on the independent commission. We owe the commission a debt of gratitude and none of the political parties has ever questioned its standing. The recent comments of an Independent Member of the Lower House, where he questioned the independence of the commission on its recommendations of the Dáil boundaries, were regrettable. It is important that politicians do not make decisions on constituency boundaries. The commission process has served this State well over the years.

I agree with Senator Mooney that reverting back to the old provincial names to European constituencies will not change constituency boundaries or the commission's recommendations. It makes no sense to have East, West, South and Dublin standing for itself. I am not sure if this issue was raised in the Lower House but I do not believe the commission would care if the provincial titles were maintained. It is not changing the constituencies or deleting the commission's recommendations. People have no association with these new geographical constituency names, good, bad or indifferent.

There is not a huge appetite among the political parties to allow senior political figures to put their names forward for the European elections. I stress the Acting Chairman is out of my orbit with these comments. One reason is the travel and appalling routine MEPs have to go through. They have to be away three out of every four weeks. When they get there, two of those weeks are spent in Brussels and one week in Strasbourg. Another reason is that because our representation has gone from 15 to 13 and the Parliament has extended to some 650 MEPs, people do not see themselves influencing the European Parliament legislative process as readily as they could in the Oireachtas. This is a great shame.

We must send our best people with the most experience to Europe. Of the current 15 MEPs, only one has Cabinet experience, the former Minister, Mr. Gerry Collins. That is a shame because there has to be a connection between Government, the Commission and the people who ultimately represent Ireland at the European Parliament. It is important that we send our best people to Europe but that there is also an appetite to do so. Having listened privately to Members on all sides of the House, I do not feel that appetite is there among the political parties. It is important since the European Parliament is enlarging and our influence is lessening.

The French use the list system very well and I am not opposed to it on principle. However, they swap their MEPs on a continual basis, based on influence. The European Parliament should be a place for former Ministers, former Taoisigh and senior figures in political parties because it strengthens the Parliament and gives Ireland a good case for putting its agenda in the European Parliament albeit within large quasi-political groupings such as the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Liberals and others. The appetite is not there amongst all the parties to send their best people, save in the case of the Acting Chairman, Senator Higgins. He is completely excluded from my utterly subjective view on this matter.