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Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities debate -
Friday, 3 Aug 1973

Election of Chairman.

I move: " That Deputy Charles J. Haughey be elected as Chairman."

I second the proposal.

There is general agreement on the Government side of the committee with the election of Deputy Haughey.

Question put and agreed to.

I shall now vacate the Chair to make way for Deputy Haughey, whose election has been carried unanimously. I have much pleasure in handing over to Deputy Haughey and, in doing so, I wish him a longer term in office than I have had. Whether or not that is a good wish I cannot say: Deputy Haughey may say I have wished a great deal of work on him.

I am, I believe, expressing the view of everybody when I say that we are very grateful to Deputy Dockrell for presiding over our preliminary sitting. I should like now to express to you, my fellow-Members of this important committee, my gratitude for and my appreciation of your electing me as your Chairman. Coming, as I do, from the Opposition party, it is appropriate that I should say we appreciate the gesture of the Government, of the parties constituting the Government and of the Minister for Foreign Affairs in adhering to this well-established and, I believe, very fine principle of our parliamentary procedures in allocating the chairmanship of an important committee of this sort to the Opposition. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs said in the Dáil, he regards this as a " watch-dog " committee and it is, therefore, appropriate in his view that, as such, the Chairman should come from the Opposition. On behalf of my party, I should like to express my appreciation to the Government parties for adhering to the principle of good parliamentary democracy.

In accepting the office of Chairman I can do no more at this stage than promise you that I will give to this task all the time and energy it will require. I hope to discharge my duties as Chairman as effectively as possible and, above all, with impartiality and fairness to all members.

I am sure I do not have to tell the Members that this committee is going to be fundamentally important. It will be very important constitutionally because we will have to undertake a new type of work. We will have to undertake work which will have a very definite constitutional significance. We will have to establish, to a large extent, precedents for ourselves and codes of behaviour. It is also a committee which will be very important economically and socially from the point of view of the nation as a whole. A very important task has been entrusted to us by the Oireachtas. We have to watch carefully over all the legislation of the Community and bring to bear on it all the wisdom and maturity we can muster and advise both Houses of the Oireachtas as fully and as comprehensively as we can in regard to this legislation. We must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we are going to have a very heavy work-load and very heavy responsibilities. I have every confidence that with the membership of the committee, as constituted, we will discharge our task satisfactorily.

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