Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

For this election we should consider randomly selecting people to appear on the ballot paper and I will put forward an amendment to that effect on Committee Stage. This is the first European election in which we will display the names of the candidates with their pictures and party affiliations. Considerable evidence has been gathered over many elections to support the theory that candidates whose names appear at the top of the ballot paper have an advantage. Historically, in the other House 25% of the total membership comprises people whose names begin with A, B, C or D. I will have more empirical evidence for this on Committee Stage. I ask the Minister of State to consider this for the European election to see how it works because the forthcoming elections provide a good opportunity to test whether it would be to everyone's advantage to list the names randomly rather than alphabetically.

One reason for reluctance to go forward for the European Parliament is that the level of reporting of the Parliament and its members is not good, except in the regions through local media. The Minister of State, as a former distinguished member of the Parliament, could testify to this. There is not the same media concentration on the contributions of our members in the European Parliament and we need to address that. We must also address how we link up with the work of the new members of the Parliament who will be elected after 11 June. Doubtless we will return to that in the course of other deliberations.

Finally, I congratulate three of my party colleagues who are retiring from the Parliament, MEPs Cushnahan, Bannotti and McCartin. They have done sterling work in various guises for the Parliament and the country. We heard contributions from some of them recently and we can testify to that. It is good that people have been able to make a career in the European Parliament and be re-elected because of the campaigns they have run there on various issues. Each of those colleagues has done an exceptional job for our party and the country.