JOINT COMMITTEE ON EUROPEAN UNION AFFAIRS debate -
Thursday, 21 Jul 2011

Role of the Institute of International and European Affairs with regard to European Affairs: Discussion

Chairman

I thank the delegates for attending. We are extremely anxious to hear the Institute of International and European Affairs and we know of the great work it has been doing over the years. It has been a beacon of light on the international and European stages in terms of the quality of the contribution it has made and the speakers it has brought to this country. We appreciate that very much. We are very anxious that this committee is fully aware of its activities and it is for that reason we have invited the delegates to outline their work and give us the benefit of their advice.

We must suspend for a vote in the Dáil but we will start immediately when we come back.

Sitting suspended at 1.58 p.m. and resumed at 2.14 p.m.

Chairman

On behalf of the committee, I welcome Mr. Dáithí O'Ceallaigh, who is the director of the Institute of International and European Affairs.

Mr. Dáithí O’Ceallaigh

I thank the Chairman and wish him luck in his future tasks.

Chairman

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dáithí O’Ceallaigh

Subject to the agreement of the committee, I propose to make a general introduction about the institute before asking my colleague, Ms Jill Donoghue, to talk about our future research programme.

Chairman

That is excellent.

Mr. Dáithí O’Ceallaigh

As members are aware, the Institute of International and European Affairs is a policy think-tank. It is independent of the Government. It does not have a political or party agenda. It monitors political and policy developments internationally and in the EU. In particular, it assesses how such developments can affect Ireland and the EU. The institute is a registered charity. Our primary source of funding is the annual fees of our foundation, corporate and individual members. We receive an operating grant from the European Commission from time to time, although not every year. In recent years, we have had to diversify our sources of funding. We have successfully tendered for projects from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Climate Foundation. More recently, we have organised conferences and seminars and imposed a charge to cover our operating costs. We are assisted in our work by many volunteers who chair our meetings, contribute to our publications and participate in our programmes.

Our target audience is those in the policy community whose views are heard and who are influential - the Government, the Oireachtas, the academic community, the diplomatic corps, the legal, financial and business professions, trade union and employer groups, Departments, State and semi-State agencies, non-governmental organisations, journalists and interested citizens. We have working relationships with many bodies, including the Oireachtas, Departments, the offices of the European Commission and the European Parliament, the Law Society, the Bar Council, the National Economic and Social Forum and the Competition Authority. We work closely with many of those organisations. We have particular relationships with organisations outside Ireland, especially in Brussels. Our branch in Brussels is mostly comprised of Irish people who work in the EU institutions in Brussels. We are associated with other European think-tanks, including the Trans European Policy Studies Association, the European Council on Foreign Relations and the European Policy Centre. I am a council member of the latter two institutions.

We hold approximately 110 events each year. We occasionally run conferences. We are holding two conferences this year. Our conference on innovation in agriculture took place in the RDS recently. Our conference on financing the retrofitting of homes and buildings will take place in Croke Park towards the end of September. We also publish a number of books every year. We have an active and successful website, on which many occasional papers and blogs are published. We are running a particular programme on the website in consultation with the European Parliament.

In our research, we are pursuing a number of major themes, including climate change, energy sustainability and the future of Europe. All of us in Europe have to face questions regarding aspects of the wider European framework such as enlargement, the neighbourhood policy and the Balkan question. We have a dedicated group that is looking at the Balkans. We do quite a lot of work there. We also look at Turkey from time to time. I spent three or four days in Istanbul just before Easter. We pay particular attention to economic governance, or the absence of it, in Europe and in the United States.

The members of the institute have reflected on how we can help this committee. We have a large archive of material, some of which could be very relevant to the committee's work. Much of it, particularly that relating to the past two or three years, is available on our website. There might be material here which could be helpful to the committee.

In the past, we have provided briefings for the committee on specific topics and we would be more than happy to do that again in the future. All the members of this committee and its staff are welcome to attend our events in North Great Georges Street. We email a list of forthcoming events to our members on a weekly basis. I hope committee members are able to access that to see what events might be of interest to them. I know the Chairman regularly draws up a programme of work and I would be happy to provide assistance with some of the matters in which the committee has an interest.

The role of the institute is fundamentally about looking to the future, to anticipate what might happen, and to try to forecast the results, particularly in respect of Europe. I will now pass over to Ms Donoghue, who will talk about our research programme.

Ms Jill Donoghue

I thank the Chairman for the kind invitation to speak to the committee today. I would also like to thank the secretariat and committee members, with whom we have had long-standing and cordial relations over the years.

The institute is a policy research rather than an academic institute. Our focus is on anticipating and monitoring policy, political and institutional developments and their implications for both Ireland and the EU. People are often not quite sure about the role of think tanks. They can be useful in a time of transition such as that in which we find ourselves at the moment, where Europe is struggling with a financial crisis and Ireland is struggling to find its position within the EU, and where Europe is struggling to find its position globally, due to the geopolitical challenges arising from the rise of China and the BRIC economies, the Arab spring, its neighbourhood policy and developments in the Balkans, famine in Africa and the Doha round of development, and internal issues such as the MFF, the budget, enlargement and the threat to Schengen, which is one of the main pillars of free movement in the single market. These are threats which people are finding difficult to navigate, and the role of a think tank in such times of transition is to provide road maps and frameworks to navigate these challenges.

One of the MEPs brought up this idea of scheduling and a framework and this will give the committee an insight into how we deal with these challenges. We look at different frameworks. The first framework might be the Presidency Troika. At the moment, we have Poland, Denmark and Cyprus, while the next Presidency Troika will begin with Ireland. Our strategic approach to developing a framework for our programme stretches from the current Polish Presidency to Ireland's Presidency at the beginning of 2013. We also look at the internal EU calendar of the Presidencies, which are fairly reliable and predictable. We know that Ireland assumes the Presidency of the OSCE in 2012, and the G8 and G20 are taking place under the French Presidency. There will be transitions in political leadership in France, Germany and China, and all of these have an impact on our work.

First, we look at the different frameworks in terms of calendars and schedules, in order to form our schedule and our programme of work in the institute. Second, we have working groups, lecture series and seminars. Third, we invite guest speakers from the EU institutions and from the member states to engage with them, to influence them and to express our concerns and priorities, and to understand their priorities and from where they are coming. That issue has just been brought up by the MEPs. Finally, we have a series of seminars, such as the forthcoming seminar on energy efficiency. We are running a seminar on China with the European External Action Service. We have a development series that we are running in tandem with Irish Aid, as well another series being run with the Competition Authority.

Rather than going into the programmes in each group, I will divide our working groups into three sets of five. This might give members an idea of the scope and depth of the work covered by the institute. This may be of interest to committee members, and we can always follow up with more detailed programmes if people are interested. The first group deals with the future of Europe and the future of Ireland in Europe. We are looking at shifts in institutional balances and how to restore Ireland's influence within those balances. We are looking at individual roles that have changed, such as the role of the President of the European Council. We are looking at new institutions such as the EAS and how they are developing, the strength and role of the European Parliament and the implications for Ireland.

The second group deals with the wider Europe, and that embraces three working groups. The first of these working groups deals with enlargement, looking at Croatia, Turkey, Iceland and the future enlargement perspective for the Balkans, the second is a dedicated working group on the Balkans and the new European neighbourhood policy, which embraces both the countries involved in the Arab spring and the Polish Presidency, with its eastward perspective towards the Ukraine and Moldova, and the third looks at justice and home affairs, with specific reference to police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. A foreign policy and security and defence group examines the new threats arising, such as piracy, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection, and not the traditional defence issues with which we have dealt previously.

We also have five groups on the sectoral side. We have an energy group that examines how to integrate regional markets into the single energy market. We are looking at grid structures, the super grid, smart grids and how Ireland can integrate itself into these developments. We have a climate change group and a digital future group which examines issues that are important for jobs and growth in Ireland, as we are host to many of the major digital companies. This group covers issues such as the openness of the Internet, net neutrality, data privacy, innovation, open data and other such topics. We also have the EU 2020 group, which embraces all of those topics and the completion of the single market.

The final group is made up of country groups. We have country groups on the UK's European policy, EU-US relations, China, France and Germany. These actors are chosen mainly because they are the main actors and allies in Europe driving the agenda.

Mr. O'Ceallaigh mentioned that we have an active website. We have moved from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, which means we have videos and blogs. People can actively engage with what we are doing. They can download the videos, podcasts and transcripts of our events. This gives people an opportunity to respond and engage better with our website team.

I have a talented research team at my disposal. There are just six researchers to cover a very large remit of policy areas. They are excellent and, before I conclude, I would like to introduce Mr. Shane Fitzgerald, who is our senior researcher on the economic governance side and who has been running a project called E-View. We won a tender for this project from the European Parliament and he will briefly explain to committee members what it is all about.

We would be delighted to assist the committee in any way, and our researchers are at the disposal of its members.

Mr. Shane Fitzgerald

Mr. O'Ceallaigh and Ms Donoghue have given an overview of the core mission and approach of the institute. On the basis of a grant agreement with the European Parliament, we are running a communications project on our website. The goal is to lever web tools and information design to reach beyond our traditional audiences. We are using social media to distribute video, audio and full graphic content which is essentially information and data designed to convey complex subjects in clear ways. The focus of the project thematically is on communicating European economic and monetary affairs, with a particular focus on the programme of work of the Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee and its crisis committee which has just been wound up.

If the committee looks at www.iiea.com it will see a lot of this content. We are always looking for new subjects and ideas to communicate. If the committee has any issue it would like us to consider, it can let us know.

Chairman

I thank Mr. Fitzgerald and other witnesses for their contributions. The work they are doing is mind-boggling. It is very impressive. It is extremely important that we have a policy on research and a think tank forum which is independent of the Government. We should have access to it.

I appreciate the comments of Mr. Fitzgerald. He said members of the committee can have access to the broad range of activities he outlined. There are more than 100 events annually as well as conferences and other research activities. I and the members of the committee are particularly interested in the communication aspect as part of our work programme, in terms of how we communicate our message. We do not operate in a vacuum. We relate to the European Union and have to relate to the citizenry. Those are very important issues. Do members have any questions?

Deputy Pádraig MacLochlainn

I thank the witnesses for their patience. What struck me was some of the conferences they organised. Does it send invitations to councillors across the State? As a former councillor one thing which boggles the minds of local representatives is when a European directive impacts on the community, on the flip side they often do not see the opportunity to avail of European programmes, grants and so one that could assist their regions. I refer in particular to the BMW area.

The witnesses would have heard brief reference to the diplomatic initiative. I interpreted from the Tánaiste, who mentioned it in many of his speeches, that it referred to restoring the reputation of Ireland in Europe. Witnesses have extensive contacts in Europe. We discussed reversing this narrative recently. There is an unhealthy and dangerous narrative, not just for Ireland but for all of Europe, that the peripheral estates were reckless, feckless, did not have in place appropriate governance structures and people in the core states had to bail us out. In turn, there is resentment in Greece, Portugal and Ireland that the terms and conditions of these programmes are too punishing for their people in terms of austerity.

On the diplomatic initiative and restoring Ireland's reputation, are we also reversing that narrative? In Ireland's case it is an injustice to the Irish people to suggest we were utterly reckless. Unfortunately we had a Government who saddled the Irish people with private banking debt and that is why we have struggled to be solvent.

Deputy Bernard Durkan

I thank the witnesses from the institute for their interesting dissertation. They have touched on all the important issues that affect us now and are likely to in the future, such as climate change, energy sustainability, Europe and economic governance. If we had kicked all of those issues into place over the past ten years we would not have a problem now. I congratulate the witnesses.

I have read about the issue of climate change. I am not convinced of it after last winter and have reviewed my thinking. It is a huge economic vehicle and we need to be very watchful and careful about what we do. Those who adopt and embrace the new policies will have an economic advantage in the future. Those negatively affected may find themselves at a serious disadvantage. There are varying degrees to which that will happen depending on whether one lives in the core or on the periphery of Europe. The witnesses are right about that.

Energy sustainability is a similar issue. We have a lot to learn about Europe in the future. We also have a lot to learn from the past. Whatever happens, the structures that were supposed to be interconnected were not. For example, we were all told about how important it was to have access to credit across Europe and if one could not access credit in this country one could go to foreign banks. They came into the country and created competition, but nobody thought of the effect of that, whether they were predatory or otherwise. They then withdrew from the market and left huge sectors of the economy bereft of any funding. They rowed away from the shore as fast as they could.

Through the various treaties we have identified the structures and the way they are supposed to work. We have the ECB and all member states in the eurozone have a member on its board; some have more than one. I cannot believe the structures did not work. From the top down, supervision did not work.

On Turkey, I happen to be one of those who believes it could be a useful influence in the European Union. I do not accept the notion that it should be kept out or strung along indefinitely.

All of the speakers touched on think tanks. We have discussed this issue in the past. The degree to which think tanks throughout Europe influence policy is huge and growing. It is to the detriment of the influence of members of national parliaments, and probably to the detriment of the European Parliament even though it does not know it.

I discovered the universality of the sources of research. I am not having a dig at researchers but if one were to chase the sources of research that backs up some of the arguments, one would find they originate in the same place. Sometimes they are well founded and well based and sometimes they are not. As the Chairman will know, Members frequently read from scripts in the House and nobody asks from where they came. They came from the same source. Such an approach does not make a contribution to the diversity of what debate is supposed to turn up. Debate is supposed to turn up the views of people coming from different perspectives and having a different vision.

We have a lot of work to do. I do not wish to borrow a phrase from another era.

Deputy Seán Kyne

I welcome the delegation. Social media is very important in terms of getting a message across to young people. What is the latest advertising on social media? What issues has the institute raised? On the institution advertising its work on the website and raising issues in other forms of media, what is the national level of awareness of the institute? Did it have a role in the referendums which were held and, if so, what was it? A number of referendums were rejected in recent years and subsequently there were other referendums on the same subjects. There is an increasing level of antipathy or concern about the EU project. Is this issue being raised at meetings?

Mr. Dáithí O’Ceallaigh

I will answer some of those questions as best I can and I will ask Ms Donoghue and Mr. Shane Fitzgerald to comment.

In response to Deputy Kyne, we are not an advocacy organisation, rather we try to analyse policy and to put forward different scenarios and the consequences of different scenarios. In regard to the Lisbon treaty, we produced the book which is a consolidated and annotated version of the treaties because as anybody who was out canvassing will know, it was exceedingly difficult for anybody on this island or anyone anywhere else to know what the Treaty of Lisbon was about. That book was used throughout Europe. We were the only people to produce such a book. It was not done by the European Commission but rather the Institute of International and European Affairs produced it. The book proved exceedingly helpful to politicians throughout Europe. We do not participate in canvassing because the institute is not an advocacy organisation.

In answer to Deputy Mac Lochlainn, the institute does not communicate directly with county councils or with councillors. We produce a weekly publication for our members. We also list our forthcoming events on our website. I suggest that Deputy Mac Lochlainn might encourage councillors to look at that list and they would be very welcome to attend any event.

Conferences organised by the institute are open to all because they are not membership conferences. For example, we recently held a conference on agriculture. It was attended by agribusiness in the main but a number of farmers and farming organisations also attended. Mr. Matt Dempsey, the editor of the Irish Farmers’ Journal, chaired the final session and the president of the IFA was one of the speakers. We engage with people outside of Dublin by means of conferences. For instance, we held a conference on retrofitting last year and it was attended by quite a number of people from all over the country. I am sure it will be the same for our conference on retrofitting in September. Our ordinary meetings are largely membership meetings but if county councillors wish to attend any of these meetings they would be very welcome.

Deputy Mac Lochlainn also asked about Ireland's position on Europe. I previously served as the Irish Ambassador in Geneva and I became director general of the institute when I retired from the diplomatic service. After the first vote on the Lisbon treaty, my German opposite number and my Polish opposite number asked me what Ireland was doing to Europe. There is no doubt but that the reputation of Ireland in Europe has been damaged over the past three to four years, for whatever reason. I will reiterate some of what was said by the MEPs. We will advance and protect our interests by engaging with Europe, by trying to understand what other people think and by trying to ensure that they understand our needs. The institute is not an advocacy organisation. There has been a response in Europe over recent months to the attempts being made here by the Government - by the Governments - to deal with the problems we face. I am very encouraged by the response of Commissioner Rehn as reported in last Sunday's newspapers. It is through this engagement that we will create circumstances in which we will find a better future for our children and our grandchildren, than the one that has been facing us recently. In answer to the Deputy's question, there is a reputation to restore because there is significant reputational damage to Ireland in Europe. As an aside, it is much worse in Europe than it is in the United States because the United States has a different mentality. As a country, we have done a great deal to start repairing that reputational damage. We had a great reputation and it was because we had that great reputation that we were able to engage so well with Europe in the past. I have no doubt that we will do so in the future.

On the future of Europe, significant changes are taking place. The implications of these changes have not yet emerged. I will refer to two areas. The damage done to the financial institutions and to the banks throughout Europe - not only in this country - is enormous. The Europeans in their own way - step by step - are putting in place machinery and procedures which, we hope, will prevent this sort of thing happening again. Very big changes are happening, including, presumably, today. However, very important institutional changes are also taking place. I refer to the relationship between the Commission and the Council and the implications of this new foreign service under Baroness Ashton. All of these things will lead to very big changes in Europe. The institute will have to examine the changes and try to forecast the implications of those changes. This is our work. Significant change and movement is taking place within the European Union, including the role of the European Parliament.

I will ask Ms Donoghue to deal with the questions on the issue of climate change.

Our website receives more than 300,000 hits a year. Almost all of our events are on video on the website. There is a great deal of interaction on the blogs. Mr. Fitzgerald referred to the programme which is in partnership with the European Parliament. This programme will lead to an explosion in interest in our website material. Compared to the websites of comparable institutions, our website is regarded as being more advanced than most institutions, most think-tanks. Our website was set up with a grant from the European Parliament.

Ms Jill Donoghue

Some councillors who were particularly interested in open data and where official data is available and can be used by county councillors, have attended our conferences. Such councillors also look at our website because it is quite well known. Many of our events are reported in the national press and on the news. The website is password-free so it is easily accessible. It also contains an archive of speeches which are of immense use to politicians and policy makers and to academics. We hope to see more councillors in the future.

As Mr. O'Ceallaigh said, the restoration of Ireland's reputation is one of the issues being examined in our group dealing with the future of Europe. We have had conversations with Mr. David O'Sullivan and Ms Catherine Day from the European Commission. Mr. O'Sullivan is now in charge of the new European external action service. They both underlined the need for engagement at every level within the EU and the European institutions and the importance of placing Irish people in the institutions so that a cadre of young people will move up through those institutions and return into the Irish body politic.

In terms of the narrative, the consensus has been that we must be seen now not just as the victims of a crisis but to go back to our status of being able to make a contribution to the European narrative. When Chancellor Kohl was here years ago he stated that large countries do not have a monopoly on ideas and that smaller countries are smart and fast. Ireland is bubbling with ideas for the future and contributions will be made towards that.

I mentioned the visits of the speakers who come to us, particularly on Mr. Fitzgerald's side of the house. We have had Olli Rehn, the Commissioner, Klaus Regling, the head of the new ESFS facility, and Axel Weber, the head of the Bundesbank and when they come to us we engage with them, tell them our concerns and try to determine where they are coming from. Prior to any of those events we have lunches during which we have deep discussions, and those discussions are open to members of the institute by invitation.

On Deputy Durkan's point about the role of think-tanks, we see our role in a very modest way. We are there to serve and explore. We do not have an agenda, as Mr. O'Ceallaigh said. We try to source our material as widely as possible and the way our working groups work, as opposed to our events, is that we bring as broad a constituency of members as possible into that working group. For example, on our justice group we would have the Garda Commissioner, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and a representative from the Attorney General's office or the Attorney General. We would have academics who are specialists in the law, media specialists in that area, politicians who are interested in that area and Members of the House. Trade unions and non-governmental organisations are also represented and in that way we try to get as broad a constituency as possible to ensure that when we do produce something, it is seen as a broad based and useful document. We never make direct recommendations. We tend to work on the issues, options and implications methodology which allows us put forward scenarios. It is then up to the policy makers to make decisions on the basis of those issues.

On the climate change programme, the financial implications of climate change is one of the issues we are examining. We have a dedicated group examining climate security, climate finance, green financing, water security, climate legislation in the European Union, United States climate action, and what China is doing on climate development. It is a broad agenda, and we would be happy to allow the members have access to our individual group programmes. Mr. Fitzgerald is best qualified to talk about the final question.

Chairman

We will leave the last word to Mr. Fitzgerald.

Mr. Shane Fitzgerald

I thank Deputy Kyne for his questions about social media. As well as our website already mentioned we are increasingly active on Twitter and Facebook, and all our videos get posted to YouTube. We come across many articles and interesting source material during our research and for sharing links, engaging with counterparts in other research institutes, engaging with the media and so on Twitter is very useful. Facebook is great for reaching a younger more international audience, and YouTube gets a wider audience for our videos.

On the infographic product contents I mentioned, members will see on our website that in the past month we have done a map of Europe comparing unemployment rates, corporate tax rates, public service remuneration and such issues. The last one we did this week concerned what we felt was not entirely correct information about the role of the European Central Bank, ECB, that was circulating during the crisis. We did an infographic on that. If members click on it it will take up the entire computer screen and, under four headings, will indicate the structure of the ECB, its role, the levers available to it, and the criticisms of the ECB. It is entirely factual, and that sort of product reaches people the best written policy report will never reach.

Chairman

I thank Mr. O'Ceallaigh, Ms Donoghue and Mr. Fitzgerald for an interesting account of the range of activities in which they are engaged. We look forward to meeting them in the future. An invitation has been issued to the events and activities in North Great George's Street. We will keep an eye on those and I am sure we will meet again before too long.

I thank the committee members who remained until the end of the meeting. It is impressive. We will not go into private session to deal with our final item, which is to announce the adjournment. The committee will adjourn until Thursday, 15 September. I hope members have a nice holiday and that they return reinvigorated and rearing to go.

Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn

Cén t-am a bheidh an obair a thosú?

Chairman

If we can work it out we will start at 11.30 a.m.

Deputy Bernard J. Durkan

It is important to have it commence after the Order of Business, within reason. If the Opposition wind up the Order of Business quickly, it will be held at that time.

The joint committee adjourned at 3 p.m. until 11.30 a.m. on Thursday, 15 September 2011.