Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy, to the House and welcome his enthusiasm for the European Union. The Minister of State will be aware that I also have enthusiasm for the European Union. On the day I finished my university exams way back in the 1950s, I travelled to Cork, boarded a boat, travelled from Cork to Le Havre and spent that winter in Europe. The Minister of State may not remember the Europe of the 1950s but my memory is of leaving Ireland as a strong Nationalist and coming back as a European. I was still a strong Nationalist but discovered that winter the dimensions of a new Europe through meeting Belgians, Dutch, Luxembourgers and French, who regarded themselves as having their own nationalities but also as committed Europeans.

Next year we will commemorate the 35th anniversary of the air crash on 18 June 1972 at Staines, Middlesex. Eleven leading Irish business people and industrialists were on that aeroplane and were killed. The accident happened on a Sunday afternoon six months before we joined the European Economic Community. Those business people had recognised our future was in Europe. I later met a person from Belfast who said he had not detected or identified the threats and opportunities that arose in Europe. Those 11 Irish businessmen who lost their lives were travelling because they recognised the importance of Europe. Six months later we joined the EEC. The Minister of State correctly drew our attention to the benefits of that involvement.

I know the Minister of State's enthusiasm for Europe and to make our link with Europe stronger. As a committed European, I should be expected to give almost knee-jerk approval to any legislation involving the European Union. In this case, however, I am afraid I cannot give approval to this measure which I regard as a retrograde step.

It is commonly accepted that a fundamental problem within the EU is its perceived distance from the people of the individual member states. This is not just an image problem or, if it is, it is an image problem with very real, practical consequences. With an increasing part of our lives dominated by what happens at European level, it is important the people feel personally involved with what is going on and that they are interested enough to monitor the day-to-day decision-making processes of the Union.

There are many obstacles to making this a reality in practice. One, which is relevant in the context of the Bill, is the relative influence of the EU decision-making process which is exercised by officials rather than by politicians who have an electoral mandate. I am not just talking about the Brussels bureaucracy, which is probably the most malign civil service in the history of humanity. I am talking just as much about the role of officials in the day-to-day interface between the individual member states and the European Commission in Brussels. Since last June, I have been the chairman of Eurocommerce, which is a Brussels-based organisation that acts as a voice for 5.5 million enterprises. Given that Eurocommerce represents 27 million employees of every shop of every kind in Europe, it is clear it is a strong voice. I can understand the frustration I hear from Europe about negotiating, dealing and being listened to in Brussels.

A vast amount of decision-making on European affairs is taken by officials and between officials. Quite often, political people do not get involved until the last minute, when their role may be to apply a rubber-stamp or to add a tiny bit of finesse to what has been decided. I refer to the day-to-day decisions which are the bread and butter of European decision-making, rather than to the issues which get aired at European summit meetings. When one considers that the European Commission has the sole right of initiating EU legislation, it could be argued that the system is heavily over-balanced in favour of officials to the detriment of those who have been politically elected.

We should resist the dilution of one or two highly valuable safeguards, the most important of which involves national parliaments, which tend to be closer to the people of their countries than a bureaucracy that is based in another country. Members will remember that after the Oireachtas engaged in some soul-searching following the rejection of the first referendum on the Nice treaty, it adopted a raft of measures that were designed to increase its scrutiny of European legislation, which had been passing into Irish law almost totally unnoticed. Members will also remember that in the discussions which led to the development of the proposed EU constitution, which is in limbo for the moment, a prime consideration was the need to increase and deepen the role of national parliaments in the overall European process.

The Bill before the House today flies in the face of the facts and trends I have mentioned. It is possible to argue for the Bill's provisions on the grounds that it will be more efficient to replace the process of passing primary legislation with a simpler process of providing for a statutory instrument in the form of a ministerial order. Equally, it is possible to argue against the Bill's provisions on the grounds of openness and transparency, as well as the need to increase rather than dilute the amount of EU business that is dealt with in the full light of day.

Ministerial orders are, in practice, invisible. They represent a form of stealth legislation that is not subject to any scrutiny. Such orders rarely raise themselves above of the parapet of public visibility. There is a place for them in the overall scheme of things, but we should be careful about what matters we choose to deal with in such a manner. When ministerial orders are used, we give up accountability and consign the matter in question to the outer darkness of invisibility. Officials love ministerial orders, as opposed to primary legislation, because they involve having to convince a constituency of just one person — the Minister. Such orders need just one ministerial signature rather than the formal approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas. In my experience, many officials have a horror of getting involved in the legislative process — some of them are happy to avoid it, if possible.

The net effect of this Bill will be to make it possible for a European legislative proposal to pass through the entire process, from conception until promulgation into law, without the benefit of any political input. Despite all the respect I have for officials, I think it is a step too far. I ask the Minister to correct me if I am wrong, but that seems to be my reading of the effect of this legislation. We can increase the efficiency of the parliamentary scrutiny of European measures in many ways. I urge us to consider alternative routes before we confess defeat and follow the course outlined in this Bill. I ask the Minister of State to rethink the steps he is taking in this Bill.