As you can see from the Order of Business, the first item is the consideration of three draft regulations of the Commission, draft regulations which are submitted to the Council. The main business of this meeting is to discuss these three draft regulations. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has very kindly consented to come along to speak to us about these regulations in particular and about Community Regional policy in general. With your permission, I will now ask Mr. Dalton to bring the Minister in to us. Perhaps I should explain also that, to begin with, the Minister will speak to us in private session and afterwards we will go into public session.
Business of Committee.
I think the Minister was rather anxious to have the public session first and then the private session.
Unfortunately, everybody has been told the opposite. We only received that suggestion from the Minister at 12 o'clock today.
I think the interests of this committee meeting might best be served by having the public session first, followed by a private session. There are a number of points in the documents which have been circulated to the members of the committee which raise general points to which the Minister may respond. Again, there are other matters which arise from different press reports concerning regional policy which the Minister may wish to comment on to the committee in private. I would make the suggestion that the committee's work might best be served by having the public session first.
I am perfectly agreeable. I think that is acceptable to us all.
We may have a problem in contacting the press.
The press were under the impression that we were having our private session first but I do not think there is any problem. We will send a message to the press gallery that we are having the public session first.
The reason for my own preference is that there are really two stages to this, one is to discuss with you the Commission's approach to this problem and then we may consider together what defects there are in it. However, if you wish to go beyond that to discuss what approach the Government might adopt or attempt to adopt, I would be happy to discuss it with you, but clearly in the national interest that would have to be in private session. I think it would be better if the background of the Commission's proposals were considered first so that it would be easier for us all to consider what line of action might best be taken.
I think that is much more suitable. There is one point I want to mention for the information of the committee and that is that at short notice the Confederation of Irish Industry asked if they could be received today. They want to make some submissions to us on regional policy, and to do so three of them will come along at about 3.45 p.m. They have given us in advance an excellent submission which I will circulate to all Members now and then we can hear them later.
May I suggest that we might consider for the next meeting inviting Congress representatives along, particularly those on the Economic and Social Committee, who are concerned with regional policy.
Yes. I should mention that our Vice-Chairman will not be able to be with us. He is still suffering from a not very serious but troublesome ailment. Senator Alexis FitzGerald is abroad. Senator Boland has a prior engagement. Deputy Thornley, Deputy Kavanagh and Deputy Herbert are all at a European Parliament Committee meeting.
Deputy Dunne hopes to be along later. He is on a deputation.