Colm Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Taoiseach to the House today. I wish to raise two issues. He will know that I am a former Member of the European Parliament where Members had one minute of speaking time, so I try to stick to that here. Having listened to the Taoiseach's presentation I know that 175 events have or will be organised for our six month Presidency. My colleague, Senator Cáit Keane, asked me to suggest that we co-host a conference on the issue of renewable energy, energy efficiency and the strategic energy technology plan. She has just returned from a conference on it in Brussels organised by EUFORES, a group of people from the European Parliaments and all of the parliaments across Europe. I ask that we co-host a conference on it during our Presidency in 2013.

I join the Leader and Senator Thomas Byrne in their call to better utilise the Seanad by scrutinising European legislation. I can confirm that there were 18,167 regulations and 750 directives issued by the European Commission over a six year period. That is the volume of legislation and regulation at a European level. Earlier the Leader identified that we only have an eight week window of opportunity to scrutinise it. We will commence our holidays this Friday but what legislation will be processed during the eight weeks that we are on holidays? Should we be involved at an early stage? There are procedures in place. Protocols 1 and 2 of the Lisbon treaty, in Articles 4 and 6, clearly sets out the role national parliaments have in dealing with European legislation. We do not use that role effectively.