Ms Phil Prendergast, MEP:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and colleagues. It is a pleasure to be back in familiar territory. It is comforting to be here to address the House. I thank the Leader for inviting me to address this House on a key pillar of European integration, the Internal Market, as the only Irish Member of the European Parliament who sits on the Internal Market and consumer affairs committee.

While the Single Market was officially completed in 1992, two decades ago, with the aim of allowing persons, goods, services and capital to freely circulate within the Union's borders, making it work for citizens and businesses has been a work in progress ever since. Legislation has been harmonised across a vast range of areas to make sure that 20 million businesses, employing 175 million workers, can have access to a market of 500 million consumers, and beyond, and that they can compete on an equal footing with their EU counterparts with rules that are known and predictable. Likewise, their EU customers have enjoyed rights that protect them in cross-border purchases, an illustrative example of which is flight tickets.

However, harmonising rules across the EU through legislation passed by the European Parliament and the EU Council is not enough to remove barriers to free movement and trade. In those cases when a directive is the most appropriate EU legal instrument, it has to be transposed by member states by means of statutory instruments or their equivalents. Even when EU law is laid by means of regulations, which have direct effect, these must still be properly applied and enforced and the same goes for the statutory instruments that transpose EU directives in the respective national jurisdictions. Very often, difficulties arise at member state level when it comes to enforcement, which may be lacking or inadequate, and disparate approaches to the detailed implementation between member state administrators are brought to the attention of EU institutions by citizens and businesses who have to deal with two or more jurisdictions as they try to apply the rules to their concrete cases.

This means that the Oireachtas, the Government, the courts and their EU counterparts play a role in making the Internal Market a workable reality for individuals and companies that is by no means less crucial than that played by the EU institutions themselves. For this reason, I did not hesitate to accept the kind invitation to address the Seanad and I hope the current Irish Presidency of the EU will help us foster stronger ties between European and national parliamentary representatives, which are much needed at a time when the key thrusts of the response of member state governments to the crisis has been found quite lacking in democratic representation and legitimacy.

The Single Market is a proven driver for trade, competitiveness and economic growth, given the scale and development of the integrated area it opens up. The Irish economy has benefited very significantly from the Internal Market and has in many ways developed to tap into its potential. Not even the most ardent of the British eurosceptics I have come across has ever questioned the importance and value of the Internal Market for their economy, which is notable. On the contrary, they remain quite keen on expanding and perfecting the means by which it enables us to trade and do business across borders, even if they are missing equally important parts of the picture. That is a case of taking the cherries they like and leaving what they do not want.

Approximately two years ago, on foot of a report prepared by former Commissioner and current Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, for Commission President Barroso, on the need to relaunch the Single Market and to make it tangible for our citizens, the Commission announced a package of proposals known as the Single Market Act. Its aims were to enable us to exploit the potential of the Single Market to a fuller extent and to stimulate growth at a time of crisis, based on a number of flagship initiatives that are currently in the course of being translated into law or materialised as policies.

The most important of those include access to finance for SMEs as small and medium-sized companies face difficulties securing funds to develop new products, expand and innovate. The Commission provides venture capital but common rules are needed to allow venture capital to flow across member states. They also include worker mobility - we are well acquainted with this in Ireland but only 2.5% of the active population of the EU worked elsewhere in the Union in 2009, while, at the same time, there are gaps in national labour markets in areas requiring highly qualified professionals such as health care or engineering. There are obstacles and problems with mutual recognition of qualifications that cut across member state laws, regulators and educational systems that prevent highly qualified professionals from either having access to practice elsewhere in the EU or from having their training acknowledged by the would-be host authorities. The review of the professional qualifications directive is thus being undertaken to iron out some of those differences. This is not a simple task, as different interests and priorities are at stake.

Health care professionals are part of a special group of professional categories that enjoy automatic recognition of qualifications under the directive. Professionals who demonstrably acquired the necessary qualifications to practice according to their home member state's rules are automatically deemed apt to practice in whichever member state in which they apply to work, as the directive sets standards and core competencies that they must gain in the course of their training. In the case of health care workers, patient safety is a major concern, however, raising issues such as command of language or the need to exchange information on those professionals who have been banned from practice due to legal or disciplinary action in the home member state.

Both through my experience as a nurse and midwife and my engagement with regulators and professional bodies, I was mindful to put the interests of patient safety above all else when amending the initial proposal. I am pleased that we mustered enough support for an alert mechanism to immediately and automatically inform all member state authorities whenever a health care professional is temporarily or permanently barred from practising due to a disciplinary action or criminal conviction. Until now, mobile practitioners could escape through the net and practise abroad until the host authorities had reason for suspicion and proactively sought information from the authorities in his or her home country. We have now ensured that the information will automatically reach the Irish authorities and vice versa. This will not only guarantee safe treatment for our patients but also permanently assure our EU counterparts that our excellently trained Irish professionals are fit to practise in the hospitals and health care centres across the European continent.

Intellectual property is another area that the Single Market Act identified, a particular achievement in this regard being the legal framework to grant pan-EU patent protection to those businesses and entrepreneurs who wish to request it. A related topic is that of copyrights management, where much remains to be done to ensure the provision of certain contents is not fragmented and even blocked across EU borders, as is still often the case with content delivered online. A digital single market is nevertheless taking shape and we are moving forward on a number of fronts. Improved consumer confidence in online trade has been estimated as having the potential to yield as much as ¤2.5 billion in cross-border online transactions alone, which is a very significant amount. This is why the EU is pushing for the development of affordable and simple means to settle disputes or to obtain redress out of court that can apply to transactions across borders, including those that were made electronically. Another necessary development to shore up confidence in electronic transactions across the board will be the enactment of legislation on the mutual recognition of electronic identification and authentication throughout the EU.

E-signatures, as we may call them, are a priority for the current Irish Presidency and I am personally involved in the process as I will lead the work of the Labour Party group in the European Parliament on this legislation, and we will have a first exchange of views on the Commission's proposal at a meeting of the Internal Market Committee on Thursday week. The process will entail a review of the e-signature directive so as to enable faster and safer identification, interaction and conclusion of transactions involving citizens, businesses and public authorities on-line.

The reform of EU rules on public procurement rules was one of the most important strands that needed rebalancing in the interests of public authorities, workers and citizens at large. Last December, in the European Parliament, we voted through a reform of EU public procurement law that I see as a major breakthrough for workers' rights and the improvement of social and environmental conditions in Europe. Public investment in works, goods and services through tendering accounts for almost 20% of Irish and European GDP. We are talking about a fifth of our economic activity, generated through the provision of public goods in the general interest. So far, public authorities were tied down by cumbersome and inadequate procurement provisions that imposed the cheapest option on them. This "penny wise, pound foolish" approach systematically undermined other public policy goals, in the name of fair competition in the internal market. That was a huge move forward. While EU public procurement law has been pivotal in improving transparency and deterring discriminatory or outright corrupt practices in the use of public funds to procure goods and services, the provision of public welfare in a social market economy cannot be simply equated to any other business either. Many of us had been pushing to secure a majority for this legislative reform for a long time.

Contractors must respect social, environmental and labour laws, including collective bargaining and international labour conventions when they bid for public contracts. Public authorities must be empowered to exclude companies that violate such laws from calls for tenders. Likewise, subcontractors must respect the same rules, and the original contractors may be held responsible for breaches that take place further down the chain. We aim to have a clear legal toolbox at the disposal of public bodies that allows them to impose, along with cost effectiveness, social, environmental and strategic criteria in their calls for tenders. This will enable public procurement to contribute to public policy goals, taking full life-cycle costs, quality, experience and continuity into account in the assessment of tenders.

We have also brought in simplified rules for social services, which often provided at a local level and by community-based NGOs. SMEs will also stand to gain from the overall simplification of the rules, the possibility to divide tenders into lots they can apply for separately as well as a facility that enables small businesses to form temporary consortia to bid for tenders. That is a hugely important element. Just because a company can storm into, for instance, the provision of elderly care or meals on wheels in a given county, claim to be able to beat any other player in terms of cost and actually deliver on it, does not necessarily mean it can do it well and truly achieve the outcomes intended by the public authority. How long will it stay there? Is it cutting corners to cut costs? Under what conditions does its staff work? What is the local know-how and community ties? These are just some of the many questions that would be ignored by awarding tenders on a cost-basis only. It is a question of humanising the element of services being bought for them and paid for by the public purse.

The present complexity of the rules crowded out smaller players without the legal and administrative resources to manage the tendering processes.

It also led smaller public bodies to err on the side of caution, for the same reasons, for fear of costly legal challenges even when the legislation could have given them some leeway to choose among other prospective contractors.

Another aspect that I have also pushed strongly concerns better transparency and governance, including the protection of whistleblowers who denounce illicit practices in good faith. While I wish we had gone further in terms of the thresholds above which certain requirements kick in and in terms of other requirements, I must concede that there is a complex balance to be struck between those and the need for simpler rules for smaller actors on both sides of the tendering process.

This brings me to mention one other important strand of the Single Market Act, albeit more general in nature. The Commission has committed to simplify and reduce the regulatory and administrative burdens imposed on SMEs, including in terms of financial reporting and accounting requirements for smaller companies. The Single Market Act package was followed up with the announcement, last October, of more legislative measures to enhance the growth potential in our continent. The Commission expects to come forward with the proposals by the end of this quarter. We need to keep doing more for consumer protection. Many of us have been pushing for universal access to basic payment accounts.

With increased mobility, more and more persons abroad find that the possibility to open a basic bank account is contingent on conditions they cannot fulfil given their employment or residency status. This makes many transactions we perform in the course of our daily lives, such as cashing in salaries, social entitlements, paying rent and bills more difficult or expensive for mobile students and workers, or even those who live in their own country but with such low levels of income that they are not attractive to commercial banking.

When I led the Labour Party group's work on the evaluation of the consumer credit directive, we found much room for improvement on consumer credit.

Consumers need to be carefully briefed on the risks they incur when taking a loan in a different currency, which is subject to interest and exchange rate variations that can become back-breaking in times of financial turmoil. EU member states have the power to extend this directive's consumer protection provisions to low-value loans, short-term loans such as payday loans, often offered on-line and by SMS. I have urged all the member states to do so as soon as possible, as increasing reports of abuse have come to my attention. The European Commission needs to keep screening lending institutions for non-compliance with their information duties.

A sweep operation carried out last year found that 70% of their websites failed to include key information and had misleading presentations of costs.

Rules on early repayment need to be straightforward and entail reasonable fees, so as not to tie customers when they can afford to free themselves from debt. We have had situations where consumers bought goods on credit that was negotiated directly between the shop and the creditor, and when the consumers exercised their right of withdrawal they are saddled with financial penalties and fees for a loan they never negotiated or saw a penny of. This is an illegal practice that the customer must not accept. The guarantors for consumer loans should be subject to the same creditworthiness assessment as the borrowers and be fully informed of their responsibilities. Customers should be given enough time to look for alternative offers on the market when their bank notifies them of raises the interest rate for their loans. Issues such as the portability of social security and pension rights are still extremely intimidating and complex even for well informed citizens, and unforeseen obstacles can put individual workers' entitlements in jeopardy. We must streamline and simplify these rules.

Most importantly, I will keep fighting for strong EU legislation setting universal service obligations, to safeguard the provision of accessible and affordable essential services, such as water, health, communications, transportation or energy. A vibrant single market is indispensable for our future prosperity but quality public services are indispensable to make it sustainable. European citizens will not tolerate open markets over open borders if they become an end in themselves rather than a means to improve their existence and living conditions. For all the potential and scope for improvement the Single Market presents, it is important not to lose perspective and overestimate what can be achieved by an unbalanced focus on further liberalisation in our economies, at the expense of our social model.

We are still reeling from very recent experiences on that front, and we saw a U-turn in the Commission's approach to financial regulation, after the heyday of the light-touch regulatory approach of the previous internal market Commissioner, a fellow countryman of ours. The Single Market is a means, a tool that has and can continue to be a driver for growth and prosperity on a continental scale. We can see it as an engine for growth but an engine cannot run without fuel or be expected to fuel itself. It can tap into and enhance the effects of whatever stimulus we inject into our economies but it will not be a source of stimulus in or by itself. If we keep suffocating the economic environment with hasty fiscal consolidation, we cannot expect the Single Market to square the circle for us.

I thank members for their attention and patience. The internal market cuts across EU borders and policy dimensions and many other topics could have been addressed, other than those I believe to be most important at present. I am happy to be here to answer any questions.

I am delighted to see Senator David Norris. I did not get a chance to give him a special mention.