After that tour de force, we can all be very brief. I do not see why this should not be in place by the end of the year. We have 27 Commissioners and some of them are not over-burdened in their portfolios. They should be put to work on this straight away. By the summer we will already be one fifth of the way through our mandate as MEPs. By the end of the year, we will be 18 months gone. We can be getting ready to get ready. I accept there needs to be consultation on this but it can be amended at a later date.
I also accept the initiative could be open to abuse. I do not know what the adult voting population is. Should we make it 16 or 18 — it is already 16 in Austria? I shall probably run into trouble with Young Fine Gael for saying this, but I do not favour giving votes to people under 18. I believe the people who are 18 should use their votes first before we decide to lower the voting age. However, I do not believe that necessarily means people of 16 should not be allowed to participate in this initiative. This is a different thing, not about making laws, so I would make that distinction.
However, there is one issue which has not been addressed so far. Let me take, by comparison, the constitutional situation as regards people living in and voting in Ireland. Everybody can vote in a local election here if he or she has reached the age of 18 and is on the register of electors. For European elections all European citizens living here who are not voting in any other jurisdiction, can vote in a European Parliament election. For the Dáil election, only Irish and British citizens can vote and for a referendum, only Irish citizens can vote. There will have to be some similar restriction here if it is to be a citizens' initiative.
By virtue of the fact that we are Irish citizens we are also European citizens, under the Lisbon treaty, and indeed under the Nice treaty before that. However, if a large immigrant population is living in a country, as in Ireland, should Lithuanians, Poles and others, for example have the right of initiative in Ireland, or should it be confined to their member state? This is not an anti-immigrant comment and I am just making a point, since we already restrict people in other areas, but if it is not confined to their member state, then some 800,000 of Irish birth living in Britain could create an initiative there to supplement an Irish initiative taken here. The same is true of Poles living here or whatever. Such issues must be addressed. I repeat that this is not to be critical of immigrants or anything like that, since we already have restrictions, as I mentioned, in regard to local, Dáil, European and constitutional votes. This is an issue we shall have to tease out, as regards who is entitled within a member state, to be a citizen, for the purposes of creating such an initiative there.
This comes into play when one asks what the minimum number of member states is that should be involved. The suggestion by the Commission is that the same formula should be used as that for enhanced co-operation. That seems to me to be a perfectly good formula. I do not believe we should create formulae. If this works, let us use it. It is not written in stone and unlike a treaty amendment, can be changed later on by legislation. It is up to us as legislators to monitor this and see whether it works or is being abused. If there is to be a minimum of member states, that presupposes that Irish, Polish, British or French citizens should have a proportionate right in the initiative. Therefore some consideration must be given to whether non-citizens of a state, albeit citizens of the Union, should be allowed to create the initiative within the jurisdiction in which they are living; if they are, should they not require some residence there or whatever? That is a technical issue, but one that needs to be addressed. I emphasise, it would be equally valid to ask why 800,000 people of Irish birth living in Britain should have the right of initiative as it would for any other group.
On the question of this not being abused, I believe those who do not opt to take the political party route of participation in democratic society, who constantly campaign, without any mandate, might want to use this for purposes which were not intended. One needs to look at places such as California, for instance, where the referendum mechanism has been grossly overused, creating terrible problems. This is not a referendum, but take the example where one might have initiatives being introduced that were the complete opposite of each other. One initiative might seek to do one thing while another, the following year, might opt to do the opposite. Ultimately, there could be all types of conflicting initiatives which would undermine the whole process and make the thing something of a joke.
For this reason I believe registration is important. I do not see why it should be centralised within the European Union. If it was to be accepted, then, as Mr. Proinsias De Rossa, MEP, has mentioned, the Ombudsman is certainly a fitting person for the job. However, I believe this is something that should be brought nearer to the representatives of the citizens. In this regard I have in mind a committee such as this, perhaps. In Denmark, for example, parliamentary committees are much more connected directly with the citizens, and therefore much more directly instructive to the government before it comes to the European Union. There is no reason whatsoever that this should be done by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, or whatever. An Oireachtas committee such as this one, for example, could become the registration authority.
Each member state might have a different process. Some member states that already have initiatives have their registration processes already in place and it does not have to be a case of one size fits all. We have a different tradition in Ireland, PR-STV, compared to the first past the post electoral system in Britain. The initiative to be adopted should be whatever it is that suits the citizens.
A couple of other questions arise. There has to be a process for identifying the person who will put his or her signature. One cannot have a Gay Mitchell, Sligo, Gay Mitchell, Donegal or a Proinsias De Rossa in several different places. There must be some verification to the effect that the person's identity is valid. It seems to me that the PPS number might be the best way to achieve this. Something of that type would have to be introduced and furthermore there has to be verification if a person has participated in an initiative in Ireland, that he or she, has not done the same in Northern Ireland, Britain, France or somewhere. Those are the matters which must be taken into account as regards how the person taking the initiative may be identified.
The question then arises in the Green Paper as to whether there should be a time limit for the collection of signatures. I am sure there are arguments for and against, but I believe there should be a time limit. If it goes on forever it loses its focus and perhaps by year 5 people will have taken a different view to what they believed in year 1, while the name is still on the petition. Therefore, there should be a time limit, albeit, it should be reasonably long to allow people to collect signatures. The figure for Ireland is 9,000, which is not an enormous number of signatures and will not take five years to collect. A reasonable time limit should be introduced.
We told people during the referendum that there should be a citizens' initiative. Many people believed that although this was promised it would never come about. Already, despite the fact that we have yet to get a Commission in place, we are already talking about getting this initiative up and running. This shows that the undertakings which were given are being pursued, not least those identified by this committee. I do not believe that the citizens' initiative needs to be exclusive to the civil society, an individual or anyone. I do not see why the citizens of this committee, if they wished to take an initiative, could not give some leadership to society and say, in effect: "We're thinking of taking an initiative on suicide." Such an issue is non-controversial, the Commission may not have powers to do this, but we could agree through the Council and the Parliament to find out what member states might have the best programmes in this chosen initiative, how to benchmark the issue in terms of the other member states while exploring why suicide has been such a terrible issue for us at this time.
It does not have to be an initiative to change EU law, but perhaps something that might be proposed in an area on which we could all agree something needs to be done. Our legislators do not need for some group to come up with, say, ten signatures. This Oireachtas committee could decide, for instance, that after discussion it was agreed that it might be worthwhile for Irish citizens to take an initiative on a particular issue such as suicide or whatever, start the process and then let the citizens seek to collect the signatures and see whether other member states will support it. It does not have to be left to other people. If it is not happening we can kick-start it and encourage it. It could be a very good process if it is not abused.
I hope this Green Paper will be translated into a regulation sooner rather than later — we are not talking about designing a common defence policy or nuclear policy or something which is hugely controversial. We have agreed this at 27 member state level and it is now a matter of implementing it. We implement more complicated things, such as the budget, every year. We should implement this as soon as we can. As part of the regulation we need to build in a review. We need to encourage the member states to use this initiative in 2012, or in 2011 as 2012 might be too late, to see if we can get this up and running. We should endeavour to have consultation or encourage people to start this initiative. We can see how it works and then perhaps put a sunset clause on the regulation. Having experienced one or two initiatives, we would see how the whole process works properly and if the regulation needs to be tweaked.
I congratulate the Chairman for taking the initiative in having this consultation here today. It is good that it should happen. If this legislation can be passed, I hope we can set the objective of Ireland being the first country to take an initiative under it and involve our citizens in the European process because there has been a complaint that the European citizen has been left behind. There is now an opportunity to involve people. Let us try to involve them in a real project and not in semantics.
