I thank the sub-committee for the invitation to join members. Let me locate my remarks in a slightly different context. The Lisbon treaty clearly has been a game changer in a number of respects to do with institutions and how they work and these kinds of considerations flow from it. I think also it must be looked at in a dynamic context, in other words, it facilitates the happening of things and they will happen in a different way and those dynamics themselves are worth trying to take into account.
Let me begin with a general remark about the nature of the national debate on Europe in which the Houses of the Oireachtas have an important role to play and this committee has a leading role to play. It is self-evidently the case that when we have episodic events like having to cope with referenda, they would seem to suggest that we are Europeanised as a society - we have polls that indicate 85% of people think it is a good thing that Ireland is in the EU and so on. Those kinds of opinions are a mile wide and an inch deep, or the metric equivalent. This should be of some concern to the Oireachtas. We in Ireland have not really taken the time to develop a contemporary narrative of Ireland's role in the world and the European Union and of how this is an important, indispensable and, probably, the only realistically available framework for the evolution of these wider relationships.
I mentioned the alignment debate. Our European narrative has been very strong on economism. When we had our first referendum, we emphasised the benefits to agriculture and the benefits to the Exchequer through someone else paying the bill. When we talked about the Maastricht treaty, we were more mesmerised by the billions than by the content, including, as we more fully appreciate now, the enormous consequences for policy of joining the eurozone currency and what it should mean for the making of public policy. When we married our European bride in 1973, we were more taken with her dowry than herself, but we need to go beyond the dowry and spend some time reflecting on the nature of the marriage and the relationship.
There is a limited awareness of how the European Union works. Outside specialist committees of the Oireachtas, there is even a limited awareness among elected representatives, no less than among the population at large. In general, we have not sought to integrate an EU programme across our syllabus in schools. I do not mean that we should insist this should be a part of the syllabus for the civics programme in transition year. While that is useful, the programme should be available more widely. It should be part of how we teach history, geography, statistics, etc. We could spend some time looking at that, the better to inform a rising generation about how systems work and how these interconnections stand.
St. Columbanus, who lived a long time ago, was widely perceived to be the first person to talk about totius Europae, all of Europe, but he also remarked, before he died in Bobbio in Italy, that the Irish were the ultimi habitatores mundi, that we came from the edge of the world. We live on the edge and the European framework is under-explored in our national narrative and our education system. I would look to the specialist committees of this House to encourage a wider debate with those in the education system who are charged with responsibility for curriculum development. This may look like an out of area activity, but it is absolutely essential and would seem to me a useful add-on to the work of the committee. I know the committee has much to do and even more to do than before, due to the new post-Lisbon arrangements, but this is important.
A second dimension, and this complements Dr. Barrett's remarks, which I compliment for their quality with an observation, namely, that interventions in the European Union, whether at the drafting stage or at the legislative stage, require Ireland to raise its game. We will have a realignment of how our foreign offices work, in part because there will be an European External Action Service, but I do not know what exactly is involved. It would be worth inviting people from the Department of Foreign Affairs to explore what this will mean for the practice of Irish foreign policy, and, specifically, what it may mean for freeing up some resources that could be recycled into other things - not to get rid of people, but to address new priorities. These new priorities must, certainly with regard to the unfinished enlargements in the western Balkans, starting but not ending with Croatia, be concerned with a larger, more diverse, more complex European Union. In that regard, we need to develop our capacity for more intensive, bilateral relations and to seek out those where we can make common cause. Our diplomats have a particular gift at doing that and have served the State well, but this area is an underdeveloped space in our diplomatic activity. It has to do with the bargaining that either builds majorities that win for what one wants in Europe or, in the legislative process, builds blocking minorities so that if one does not want something to get through, more homework will be required to be done. This requires parallel accountability. We should call in those officers of the State whose job it is to do these things - in sectoral Departments and in the Department of Foreign Affairs - to deal with accounts of performance and non-performance and to make that part of the work of this committee.
Dr. Barrett commented on the transposition phase. In that phase, the widespread use of statutory instruments has probably meant that the transposition function has not received the focus or accountability it may need. Members of this committee will find as politicians that, frequently, the implementation part of the transposed law produces questions, some of which, when we compare the outcomes with other states, turn out, perhaps, to have been a rather zealous excess in the matter of transposition. This is not merely a technical issue but trickles down to solid practical political effects in terms of administration and policy choice. It is the kind of process that needs its hour in the sun, but it has remained very much, in our experience in the European Union, in the shade.
I would like to make a second general point. This concerns something nobody does but which, perhaps, a specialist European committee should take charge of doing. We are now part of a global economy and are one of the most globalised economies in the world in terms of openness to trade. The European Union - notwithstanding its 480 million citizens in the 27 European Union states - struggles still and will continue to struggle post Lisbon to better find its self-expression on the global stage in a world where we talk about one plus one, the United States and China or the G20. These are not formations where the European Union is central, although it gets to play. In that context, this country tends to follow examples from the Anglo-American space in popular media and in our politics because of our broadly monolingual culture and our historic ties through emigration, history and linguistic culture to the United Kingdom and the United States. However, if we want to do things we say we want to, such as be smarter, greener and more sustainable in our future economic and social policies, we could find some good and useful examples among partner states in the European Union. We have a chronic absence of curiosity about how other states work and function. I suggest that if we look at the data, whether for competitiveness, information technology indices, carbon emissions per head, renewables as a percentage of final energy consumption or energy imports as a percentage of total energy consumption, we come out pretty bad in many of these areas in comparison with Europe's best. We find a comfort zone of complacency when we compare ourselves against European averages.
Let me give an example. The poorest region of the 300-plus regions within the European Union today has an income per capita approaching 30% of EU GDP. The richest region, which is the greater London south east, in the United Kingdom, has an income per capita of 330%. If we give an average, that kind of diversity means the average is meaningless, because it is between very poor and very rich. Therefore, we need to start measuring and benchmarking ourselves against appropriate performers. I would argue that when we look at the EU 27, the appropriate performers - I can submit a paper on this with details and tables if required - are six other states, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. These are relatively small, with different characteristics state by state. They are small open economies and on these things we want to be - greener, smarter and more sustainable - there is much we could learn from them.
Without getting lost in a long statistical discourse - I have the data - if one compares us across a number of meaningful contemporary comparisons against that peer group within the European Union, I regret to observe that we are the worst or second worst performer in virtually every relevant criterion one could pick. If we want to shift the gear from the rhetoric of being world class to outcomes that move us towards that, we need to be aware that we have really good, solid working examples and we need to overcome our chronic absence of curiosity about some of our smaller, but very successful, European neighbours. I urge this committee, with its European vocation, to consider a benchmarking exercise. One is not naive to suppose that what happens with the legacy effect in one society is automatically transmissible to another society or economy, but nor should one be naive by being happy or complacent that we are better than the European Union averages, when the averages are so diverse as to be meaningless. If this country wants to be among the best, let us measure against the best and measure our performance against that.
I will conclude with a number of remarks. One of the important elements in the Lisbon treaty is the introduction of a citizens' initiative. The legal framework for that is now being negotiated and dealt with through the Brussels-based European institutions. It is important that someone, in parliamentary terms, would take supervisory ownership of that in Ireland. This is an important initiative and it is one for citizens, but who will be the watchdog to voice any Irish concerns and, when there is an Irish system, bringing forward the debate on that? The committee is well placed to do that by virtue of the work it does.
On the question of following through, when one decides, in an eight-week period, to issue a reasoned opinion and say one has anxieties about proportionality or subsidiarity, I suggest the committee considers the appointment of a political rapporteur on its behalf to follow that issue and charge it with dealing with the equivalents who are dealing with that in the secretariat in the European Council of Ministers and to deal with the rapporteur in the European Parliament. If it is an issue of some moment in the politics of this House, the committee should invite the rapporteur of the European Parliament to present and answer questions here.
The fact that one gives a reasoned opinion and things may still proceed does not mean one should not be interested. In the protocol on national parliaments attached to the treaty, the committee, as parliamentarians, has the right through the member state to bring an action to the European Court of Justice if it believes something offends, or continues to offend, subsidiarity and proportionality. I suspect the full elaboration of what those terms actually mean in practical politics will eventually be elaborated through contested cases and jurisprudence emerging from the European Court of Justice.
My final point concerns the Passerelle clauses which have been mentioned, and the movement from qualified majority to unanimity and so on. As the committee is aware, the institutions in Brussels which would contemplate such moves are obliged to give member states six months' notice. As the committee is also aware - this is by no means a trivial power - national parliaments have the ability in treaty law to say "Yea" or "Nay". If a national parliament says "No", under some but not all of these provisions a member state has the right to stop it in its tracks. Therefore, one has the right of very considerable engagement.
Those in Ireland who, through the Lisbon treaty debate, argued that this was giving everything away and that there was a kind of automaticity are simply wrong. There are procedures, checks and balances and the committee will be in the front line of those checks and balances. Therefore, it is the guarantor to the Irish electorate which overwhelmingly supported the Lisbon treaty on its second outing, of the integrity of that system in terms of the rights it can exercise through the House on our collective behalf.
