Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Childers to the House. I am delighted she is here. We learnt that her title is to be Deputy. I welcome this debate on the EU public health legislation and I agree entirely with Senator Cullinane. There is a future for this House but it must change what it does. One thing we can do is make sure we change our duties, one of which must be to ensure EU legislation receives much more scrutiny than it has had up to now. Much of the legislation that comes from Europe aims to improve the lives of European citizens and public health legislation can be seen as one of the principal and obvious areas in which the EU can benefit its citizens.

The title of the Deputy's address points me to several specific topics, including tobacco lobbying. The EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, John Dalli, resigned over allegations that he used a middle man to ask a Swedish tobacco company for millions of euro to change EU legislation on tobacco, as well as the horsemeat scandal. I will quote from a letter from transparency group Alter-EU as reported in The Parliament.com, which states, "The commission has now been attacked for its 'failure' to 'properly implement' an international convention designed to protect lawmaking from the 'vested interests' of the tobacco industry." There have been claims that European Commission departments "currently fail to provide transparency around meetings with tobacco industry lobbyists and those working to further the tobacco industry's interests." It also seems that some MEPs have been fielding questions and putting forward amendments on behalf of tobacco lobbyists. I would love to know the Deputy's view on this. Can she elaborate on whether the EU institutions are doing anything to remedy this?

The point I find worrying about the horsemeat scandal is that it came to light only via a random food check here. While some argue this is not a public health scandal, and I agree, can we have confidence in the EU's ability to prevent a full-blown public health scandal such as that might have been? There has been an argument that relatively recent EU requirements on mincemeat pushed up costs and led to retailers buying questionable meat from other sources, including those outside the EU. The horsemeat scandal does not inspire much confidence in the EU.

I have always called for more traceability. That can extend to pharmaceuticals. In Belgium and Italy every drug can be traced with a bar code. This is a very important service, especially when there is a massive rise in counterfeit medicines. I am not referring only to Ireland but to the whole of Europe. What are we doing at a national level? We must do everything to protect the consumer and we have not been doing that. I welcome the recent vote in the European Parliament on giving patients quicker access to cheaper generic medicines. New EU rules will require national authorities to meet these new deadlines. I would like to hear the Deputy's views on whether we can do more than we are doing to protect the health of European citizens.