I thank members for participating in this committee. The Seanad Select Committee on EU Scrutiny and Transparency, which we sought for the past five years, came about as a result of a Cabinet decision on 12 July 2022 regarding a role for the Seanad in scrutinising EU directives. This role, which had been proposed in various reports, sounds wildly complicated but it is simple. The language with regard to the transposition of EU directives by way of statutory instruments is complicated but if we boil that down, it means Government Departments get laws from Europe, they then add to them and TDs, Senators and Oireachtas committees do not see them before they are then signed into law by the Ministers. That power dates from the European Communities Act in the 1970s.

To give one of many examples, the directive on organ donation from the European Union, which amounted to 16 pages, resulted in the first organ donation legislation in the history of the State. The directive was added to by the Department of Health, and resulted in a law of 42 pages. TDs, Senators and the health committee did not see the legislation before it was signed into law by the Minister for Health. Some 70% of the laws made in Ireland every year are done this way. This process lacks transparency and creates a democratic deficit. TDs, Senators, committees and, more importantly, the citizens who are impacted by these laws should have the right to see them and scrutinise them.

Our role as a committee is not to scrutinise all of these directives. I do not want to scare anyone. What we have here relates to the first half of next year. These are only the EU directives, the proposed law from Europe, and Departments have not added to them yet. To give an example, in 2024, legislation from Europe amounted to 4,000 pages, which is the equivalent of eight boxes of paper. We will line those up here at some stage and indicate to Senators which Department was in charge. This is how much legislation is being passed by Departments and signed into law by Ministers without any scrutiny. That is a democratic deficit.

Scrutiny is the role of this committee and we fought long and hard to get it. It did not go as well as we had hoped in a previous Seanad. I think we received only three directives or statutory instruments from Departments before they became law. That will not happen this time. As this is a Cabinet decision, Departments should oblige and follow it. The directives, or draft statutory instruments, should be with the committee six months before the Minister is due to sign them.

One of the first items on our agenda relates to fines. As a result of the late adoption of European Union legislation, Ireland continues to incur fines.

One of those fines, which we incurred recently, was for €1.54 million for the late adoption and transposition of a work-life directive. I will come back to that in a minute. I suggest that we hand that over to the committee responsible and ask it to bring in the officials to explain why transposition was delayed so long that it cost the taxpayer €1.5 million.

I raised the issue of organ donation as an example of how the system is not working. When we get those directives, we will circulate them. The briefing documents include a list of the directives that are due to be transposed in the next year. We will look at those that are late, some of which date back as far as 2021 and there are others from 2024 and 2025. That is the work of the committee. We will also be getting notification on infringement proceedings before fines are issued. We will make the relevant committees aware of those possible fines and waste of taxpayers' money.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his initiative on this. I also thank the Senators who volunteered to give their time. This will be a powerful committee if we have the full co-operation of all the people and stakeholders involved. I note what the Cathaoirleach said about this having Cabinet approval. I hope the relevant officials will be tuned in today. I have no doubt they will be. I hope we will not be frustrated in this process. I am aware of the difficulties encountered by the previous Seanad committee in relation to this. I know the Cathaoirleach is fiercely committed to this committee and has driven it. I wish him well on that.

It is critically important that the committee have a communication strategy that runs in parallel with our work. It is important we do not fall into what is standard in most parliaments and we speak into a vacuum. We need the public. I appeal to those who report both internally and externally, the media in particular, to be active in engaging. I would like the committee to develop greater communication in terms of Euronews and our MEPs. They are critically important in all of this, as is the Committee of the Regions. I thank the Cathaoirleach and secretariat and wish them well in the task ahead.

On the infringements dating up to December 2025, the schedule is interesting on the infringement numbers and the Departments responsible. I see the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is at the top of the list I am looking at. The Cathaoirleach raised the issue of fines and the concern to taxpayers. Why is that happening? Is it oversight or negligence on the part of the Government?

The directives are important, as are scrutiny and transparency. I wish everyone well, particularly the secretariat and the support team. I ask for an assurance from the Cathaoirleach that we have the resources needed to carry out this work effectively. It is important that we do not become a talking shop and that we issue reports and findings or cautionary memorandums in relation to issues we find and that we engage with stakeholders, when we bring them in, to ensure this is an interactive process. It is important that this interactive process. It is also important that we define the roles and functions in order that there is no ambiguity about what our role is as members versus the Departments and who is responsible in the relevant Departments. A plethora of Departments are involved here, for example, the Departments of climate action, transport and housing. That is really important.

I note what the Cathaoirleach said regarding Cabinet approval. There should not be any difficulty in all of this, but we need resources for the administration, secretariat and research staff that will be required to track down some of this stuff. We need people to engage with the Ministers responsible. I wish everyone well in this process.

I am glad to see the committee convening. The work is important. In highlighting this work, we are looking today at some of the record as regards fines and late transposition. It is important to be clear that one of the key purposes of this committee relates to the quality of the transposition and the quality of the law that is being made. We have a situation whereby a huge number of laws, which affect people's lives every day and aspects of their experience in the country, are being made without proper oversight and scrutiny. When we do not have scrutiny, we do not make the best decisions.

It is important to emphasise because it is sometimes not understood is that there are choices. These EU directives are not monoliths that say, "Here is the EU law". They come with a lot of national choices around which aspects we want to transpose, how we want to put them into effect, who we want the directive to apply to and who we do not want it to apply to. There are a lot of choices being made. At the moment, those choices, which have real consequences and effects on people's lives, are being made without any parliamentary scrutiny at all.

We have a key role in addressing fines and ensuring the timeliness of transposition. Crucially, this committee can act as a signpost and that when choices are being made around how to apply an EU law here - we can give multiple examples where choices make a big difference, including areas like public procurement - we need to make sure we send the matter to the correct committee to make sure it is scrutinising it. One of the key examples is the work-life balance directive. Again, there are questions there. Ireland was fined around €1.5 million for its late transposition. The transposition also did not get proper scrutiny. There are a lot of choices in how it is described. I am not going to go into them but they include Articles 4 and 5 around whether Ireland is delivering on the right to collective bargaining and the adequacy of the minimum wage. Those are all part of the detail of the directive and the real choices in how we may or may not transpose them. I emphasise that there is an equality issue and democracy and transparency issues as well as better process and better timeliness and avoidance of fines.

I am looking forward to the work of the committee. I hope all Departments will co-operate with us. It would be appropriate and wise for them to do so. As Ireland moves into the Presidency of the European Union, we should be setting an example in this regard.

I thank the Chair and previous speakers for their contributions. I will say this in layman's terms, if that is possible at all, knowing that Senator McDowell is over there paying attention. I am trying to get a basic understanding. EU legislation is passed down to Ireland. Ireland, by way of a statutory instrument, transposes that legislation into Irish law. Like Senator Higgins, I am concerned about fines, but I am also concerned about what happens between an EU directive being issued and it being transposed into Irish law. That is where my sole focus is because that is where we have to put in the work. My fear in relation to what the Cathaoirleach is presenting to us is whether we have the resources to do what is being asked of us. I honestly do not think we can do that unless we selectively choose a number of EU directives and watch how the statutory instrument operate and the content of that statutory instrument. Do we have the power to amend it? What powers do we have in all these equations?

To clarify that, the committee is akin to a watch tower or air traffic control. We are not scrutinising all the legislation. That was tried previously when there was a committee for scrutinising EU legislation. That committee collapsed under the weight of the legislation. Our job is to get the drafts and send them to the relevant committees. We are the second stage. We may have four or five drafts before us in a few months’ time and we will decide to decide then to, say, the transport committee or the environment committee. We are not delving into the scrutiny aspect.

People might point out the committee needs to be aware of a particular element. The Taoiseach talked about gold-plated European legislation. That gold-plating is being done in Government Departments. In two or three years' time, when people realise they cannot do something any more because of EU legislation, it will be because the EU legislation was added to by Government Departments without anyone seeing it. The committee's job will be a general one of referring EU legislation relating to transport, community or the environment to the relevant committees. It is up to the committees to go through the detail with the departmental officials and to point out, for example, that the Minister has six months to sign the legislation as otherwise there will be fine, or that the committee has major concerns.

The role of the relevant committee, whether the transport, agriculture or housing committee, is to engage in a type of Committee Stage of the instrument. The Minister may listen to the committee but decide not to make any amendments. That is how Committee Stage works, as we have seen in the Seanad, in the normal course of primary legislation. We have learned from previous mistakes. The committee whose job it was to go through all of the legislation collapsed under the weight of the work that had to be done.

To be clear, our role is not to go through each piece of legislation line by line. Individual Members might decide to ask the Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs to come in as part of the process of discussing four or five statutory instruments and deciding to send them to particular committees but they should not be long, detailed discussions in which we deal with legislation section by section. Members can raise concerns but if they want to take them further, they can do so at the relevant committee. However, our job is not to go through every statutory instrument that comes in from a Department.

I fully agree with the Cathaoirleach that our job is not to scrutinise every statutory instrument as to its substance. What we are here to do, as the Cathaoirleach said, is to act as air traffic control regarding European legislation coming to be transposed into Ireland and to signal to the joint committees of the Oireachtas that this material is coming before them and needs to be looked at before the Minister signs the statutory instruments, effectively transposing them into law without any scrutiny.

Our efforts in the previous Seanad to progress this important task ran into many difficulties. There is no point in rehearsing them now but one thing we should be conscious of is that what we are doing here is seen by some people in the broader establishment as inconvenient. It is a case of "Leave us alone and if we incur fines or delay, do not talk about it." It may complicate some people's lives to be somewhat accountable for the process of transposition as opposed to the substance of transposition, but it is important that this Parliament carry out that task.

The reason the Seanad put up its hand to do this work is that TDs have traditionally been more concerned with constituency and representative matters than Senators have. To ask TDs, in addition to all their other work, to sit down and do the work we are doing here would be unlikely to attract huge effort on their part. They would ask themselves this simple question: "Is there a single vote in this for me and does participating in this process make it more likely I will be re-elected the next time round?" The same applies, to a lesser extent, in Seanad Éireann.

We in this House do not have a radar as to what is happening in the European legislative process. I am a reasonably open-minded Member of the Oireachtas and for the past 30 years, in various guises, I have been part of the Oireachtas from time to time. The one thing that strikes me is that Leinster House has no handle at all on what is being proposed to be made into a directive in Europe or interacting as the European treaties envisage with the European Parliament, through our Members saying "This is worrying to us." We have nitrates directives which have suddenly become hugely controversial but we do not see what is coming down the tracks in any real sense.

Without overcomplicating our lives, in addition to the work this committee is going to carry out, there is a very strong case to be made for the Houses of the Oireachtas engaging with the European Parliament and European Commission and, just as the library service gives us very valuable material on legislation coming before us, paralleling that kind of service to democracy by giving some degree of forewarning of what is happening and is likely to happen in Europe; where proposals for directives are in the European process; what is likely to happen and what is happening in committees of the European Parliament; and what the Council of Ministers have or have not done regarding proposals for directives.

We need to be a good deal more conscious of what is happening in Europe because otherwise there is a disconnect. Our MEPs are in Brussels doing one thing and we are here doing another and there is not an adequate degree of common shared knowledge. It is the case that the bigger parties have MEPs but they only have a very small number of them and they do not have internal communications. A Fianna Fáil Deputy with an interest in a particular topic may or may not be alerted by his or her party members in the European Parliament as to what is likely to be made into a directive in the near future.

I am really saying that, in addition to the extremely valuable work this committee will be doing, there is a case for a wider engagement by Leinster House with what is being generated by way of regulations and directives in the European legislative process, so that we can see things well in advance of the stage we are concerned with, namely, the transposition stage, and we can actually see what is being cooked up - if I may use that phrase - in Europe for transposition in the ultimate, long before it comes to the point where it is simply a matter of committees looking at proposed statutory instruments and long after the fundamental principles of directives have been decided.

I wish the Chairman well and compliment him on his initiative in establishing this committee in the previous Seanad and his determination to make sure it works in this Seanad.

To add to what has been said, there are stages where we are adding value and doing something different. On our different committees, we get notes and communications saying a directive is being developed. We could and should have more proactive engagement in which committees can send opinions on a communication. I think it is beginning to happen. Committees should be able to send a political contribution to the debate that is happening around the drafting of a directive. That is one piece but, at present, the point at which the negotiations are happening at European level on a new potential directive or law seems to be the only point at which the Oireachtas touches it.

As Senator Casey described, after the directive has been negotiated, there is usually a wide list of opt-ins, opt-outs and choices still to be made at national level. When that becomes a statutory instrument, as the Chair pointed out, not only are opt-ins and opt-outs chosen, but there is also a huge amount of additional law that sometimes gets attached to it.

It is not going to be every piece. Not every statutory instrument is complicated and not every one will need detailed scrutiny, so I do not imagine that we will recommend detailed scrutiny of every directive. There was one, however, which we dealt with in the previous committee, where we pushed very strongly to get a draft. We were denied a draft. Just two weeks before the deadline, legislation running to 100 pages was placed before the Minister and signed in the last days before transposition. That was a 100-page piece of legislation that nobody in the Oireachtas got to see and or make an input to.

I do not envisage the committee dealing with all these pieces of legislation. As I see it, as the legislation comes in - perhaps 20, ten or five instruments will come in over a quarter or a year - we will look at it and decide, for example, that four seem to have a lot of really significant choices involved so we will send these to the relevant committees. We will say to the committee that while it may have seen this legislation four years previously when it was a Commission proposal being negotiated, here is the proposed output from that proposal and the committee should look to it. It is really sending that signal to a particular committee and adding that into its agenda. Otherwise the committee will not have sight of it until after the fact.

We think of Europe as bringing in new laws and new standards. This committee is crucial right now - and this is my opinion - because we are at a point where we are seeing a whole raft of what are called "omnibus directives" coming through Europe at the moment, where we are actually seeing the roll-back and removal of a whole set of environmental standards and of human rights standards in a raft of areas. The worrying thing about those directives is that they are moving really rapidly. Consider for example the corporate due diligence directive. I was talking about this directive for five years in this House. It took five years to negotiate human rights and environmental standards for the big corporations. The omnibus Bill to undo that directive was done in three months. We see a new rapidity and a huge amount of almost "undoing" legislation coming through. That is going to be crucial too if Ireland is going to decide which standards we are going to choose to remove or not remove, or in fact maybe hold on to. That will be important in a lot of areas that directly affect people's lives.

The timing of this committee, with its renewed energy and a new and strong mandate, as outlined by the Chair, is really important because I think there will be a lot of surprises coming in terms of some seriously concerning legislation. We may well have different views on it, and that is fine, but the main thing is that it should be looked at by the people who are voted in and charged with representing the Irish public's concern.

I wish to back up the points made by Senator Higgins, in particular in relation to the omnibus proposals and how quickly they were brought through. That does not give us an opportunity or a chance to comment or for a committee like this to be able to kick back on what were really regressive proposals and a regressive rowing back on environmental and human rights legislation.

Senator Casey made a point about the resourcing of the transposition of legislation. While it is not for this committee, it is one thing transposing an EU directive but then the State has to put in place the mechanism and financial supports to be able to realise the transposition. I speak specifically to the habitats directive. Since that directive was brought in, the State has never fully realised the necessity of it. I note with interest that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Heydon, spoke about opening it up again following the nitrates derogation. He mentioned that in the Irish Farmers' Journal last week. That is worrying because it is not coming from nowhere either. I have concerns about what is happening in the bigger picture at European level.

I go back to the point Senator McDowell made about our citizens' relationship with Europe. A separate piece of work needs to be done at local authority level around setting up EU units and ensuring that citizens have a say and an opportunity to participate. Under the nature restoration regulation, regulations are decided and brought through the Commission and the Parliament. They do not have any scrutiny. Obviously that was a good one but they may not always be that way.

These are issues that are perhaps outside the scope of what this committee will deal with but it is very welcome that the Cathaoirleach has moved to get this committee up and running. It is very welcome that we are sitting in the Seanad Chamber because it gives gravitas to the work we are about to embark on. I look forward to working with colleagues across the House on this important piece of work. If we do this well over the term of this Dáil and Seanad, it will be a good piece of work that will benefit our citizens greatly. I look forward to working on this with the secretariat, the Cathaoirleach and my colleagues over the next number of years.

Somebody who is out in the community trying to work through regulation and legislation as part of their daily activities will realise the importance of this work. Every one of us in here wonders sometimes why we adopt the same EU legislation in Ireland but it is completely different from what it is across the rest of Europe. It is because this transposition piece makes the difference between how it is interacting between different countries. Everybody is giving out about bureaucracy, red tape and the time it is taking to make any decisions to get anything done. Every time we take transpose EU legislation and, as was said, it comes in with 20 pages and ends up with 41 pages, that adds another 20 pages of bureaucracy to the legislation. It has probably made it much more complex.

Air traffic control is great but, as a member of the housing committee and the finance committee, I ask members not to give us any more legislation to scrutinise. We are out the wall as it is. Committees are meeting twice a week and the housing committee is meeting three times a week. We are going to do our piece of work but where does it end up and what will happen at the end of the day? My concern is resources. If the Cabinet is serious, it must resource this committee and beyond. We will find that most of the regulation coming in will go to the same committees. It will probably be for the transport, environment and climate committees, which are probably flat out at the moment. Their staff can barely cope with what they are doing at the moment, never mind what we might throw at them.

We do have to scrutinise the transposition piece. We cannot just say legislation is for the transport or housing committee. Somebody has to take an overview of what is in the transposition piece and scrutinise it to some extent. We have to send some kind of report to each committee. We cannot just say that this is for the transport committee, wish it good luck and off it goes. We do have to scrutinise it to a certain extent, albeit not line by line. We need to provide the committee with a summary of the implications of transposition.

The more I sit here, the more I understand the importance of the work we are trying to do here. This is why I have a concern about how seriously the committee is being taken and how it is resourced. Kicking legislation to a committee will not achieve the outcome that we want unless that committee is equally resourced to deal with what it is trying to deal with.

If and when resourcing issues arise, we will certainly bring them to the Commission and the relevant Departments. Information notes will be provided to go with the directives. It will not quite be a memorandum like those we would get for legislation but a memorandum will be made available to the committee as well. I will give an idea of the scale of some of the directives that are coming this way. The energy performance of buildings directive is 68 pages. That is before the Departments add to it.

The issue is that 68 pages could easily be over 100 pages and, depending on the gold plating, that could add to the cost of housing. Is it going to be the right form of energy? Is it going to add to the issues around housing? Are we going to ensure it helps us with our climate change targets? All those questions are part of it. Normally, that would be added to and nobody will ever see it, and then we wonder why we have this gold plating on particular elements, or why we are not meeting our climate change targets because we did not put in the directive.

Another directive that is coming and that is of concern to people is one related to the gathering of electronic evidence in criminal proceedings. Does anyone think Members of the Dáil and Seanad and the citizens of Ireland should not be entitled to see that before the Minister signs it into law? That directive is only ten pages long but it could end up as legislation running to 20, 30 or 40 pages that nobody will see. Our aim as a committee is to get such legislation to the relevant committees, which will report back to us that, for example, a directive was added to or changes were made as a result of their engagement. There is an issue related to capital access for small and medium-sized enterprises. Again, that is a very important issue that people often talk about in here. There are issues around equality in terms of pay between genders. They are all big issues we talk about. People call for legislation on these matter but, in fact, it is legislation coming in directive form which we never see. The aim of this committee is to make sure we see that legislation in advance.

If extra resources are required, we will seek them. We want to ensure the citizens of Ireland get to see legislation before the Minister signs it into law. This matter came to my attention through a book published by the Houses of the Oireachtas. Brian Hunt, who may be known to Senator McDowell and others, did a paper on the scrutiny of legislation in which he noted that statutory instruments are used like a King Henry VIII provision. This is where each Department and Cabinet member can rule by decree under the legislation given to them in the European Communities Act. Not only can they change a directive, but they can change it again subsequently, and nobody sees that prior to it happening. We can also look at what lobbying is done during the directive process. That is part of the information note and committees could look into that as well.

I thank members for their attendance. I spoke to the Taoiseach at a meeting of the committee Chairpersons last week and thanked him for his support for the establishment of this committee. It was no small lift to get the committee established and a Cabinet decision done. It was largely down to the Taoiseach's support for it. Diarmuid Lynch from the Taoiseach's office was also hugely supportive. I propose we write to the Taoiseach and all Government Ministers on foot of this meeting to ask them to ensure we get directives six months in advance and point out that this was a Cabinet decision. I also propose we write to the chairs of the Oireachtas committees outlining the work we are doing and what is going to happen. I will meet with the chair of the Working Group of Committee Cathaoirligh, Deputy Sean Fleming, and we will brief the committee Chairpersons on this work.

Another part of our work according to the terms of reference relates to fines. I propose we write to the committee Chairpersons about any infringement proceedings that could happen. I suggest we do that by sectoral committee. I also suggest we refer the work-life balance directive and the €1.54 million fine to the relevant committee, namely, the Committee on Children and Equality, and ask it to look at how it got to the point where the Irish taxpayer ended up paying €1.54 million because the directive was not done on time.

Another part of our remit relates to the Windsor Framework and scrutinising drafts, directives and proposals by the EU and the impact they could have for Ireland, particularly in relation to the Windsor Framework; the island of Ireland; the United Kingdom; the EU and its member states; the United States of America and its states; Canada and its provinces; and other nations and regions as the committee deems appropriate. The Windsor Framework is important as divergence happens between the UK and the EU and not a lot of people are paying attention to how that will impact us and Northern Ireland. That is a very important piece of work.

In terms of the briefing notes we will get on these regulations, who will prepare those? Is that a level of pre-legislative scrutiny or will that be a more general briefing directly from the EU? Depending on who prepares such briefings, the standard and level vary from committee to committee. Can we look at that from a scrutiny point of view? Where will those briefings come from?

The briefing notes are supplied by the Departments and are generally relatively short. They would be one or two pages in length at most and also address whether there has been any lobbying or what engagement has occurred. They provide a general outline of the Bill. In the case of a draft statutory instrument arising from a 68-page directive, that is likely to end up as hundreds of pages. The briefing note gives a very glancing summary in relation to that.

I know the Departments will be writing to us with a briefing. It is also important for us to liaise with the Departments, all of which have teams that work on the EU transposition. We should have a conversation with them so there is a bit of joined-up thinking and the committee or the particular Department is not overburdened with the workload. We should share the workload and get a better understanding because sometimes the Departments also find it hard to get time with the Ministers to get an understanding, and the legislation just gets signed.

That is a concern. The Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs will be in here as part of our proceedings in future meetings. He is in charge of the co-ordinating groups and making sure we hit targets in terms of transposition deadlines. That does not always happen. With the EU Presidency coming, the Government and Departments are anxious to make sure we hit the compliance deadlines and directive deadlines as well.

In relation to the communication the Chair proposes to send out, this has to be taken seriously all the way. How many Cabinet Ministers understand what this committee is and what we are doing at the moment? How many of them even know we exist or what we will be looking for from them?

I do not think there would be widespread awareness of the committee but we will write to them-----

What about the Secretaries General?

They are aware of it. I spoke to the Attorney General and the Minister for justice before we established the committee to make sure we had-----

I just want to make sure our hard work will be taken seriously. For that to happen, perhaps the Taoiseach should communicate to his Cabinet Ministers that this committee has been established for this sole purpose and ask that they do everything they can to assist the committee in its work. I do not want another logjam to arise, where we are fighting with Departments, Secretaries General and Ministers because we cannot get information from them. I am concerned about how serious this committee is being taken further up the line.

Based on that, I propose we write to the Taoiseach and all Cabinet members outlining that. In our letter to the Taoiseach, I propose that we ask him to communicate at the next Cabinet meeting in January that the committee has been established by a previous Cabinet decision and to ask Ministers to talk to the officials responsible to make sure we get the draft legislation in time, that is, six months before the transposition deadline.

That would be a valuable contribution.

I do not want to prolong things but, arising from what Senator Casey said, we should have our own communications strategy. We need a leaflet or some kind of document circulated, not merely to every member of Cabinet but to every TD and Senator, because otherwise we will be in a little shoebox by ourselves. The media, too, should be aware of what we are doing and when we are having a meeting. We should give advance knowledge of our meetings to the media. I do not know what the editorial process in Oireachtas TV is, but I am glad that we are in this Chamber. It possibly improves our chances of attracting the editorial eye of Oireachtas TV, so that the fact that we exist and are having meetings is not as secret as the previous committee’s activities ended up being.

Before I bring in Senator Higgins, I agree with Senator McDowell on the communications piece. We might send letters to TDs and Senators in the new year, providing an outline in very simple terms. When one reads Brian Hunt's book, it is hard to imagine how lacking in transparency the majority of legislation is. The legislation we deal with in the Dáil and Seanad every year is a drop in the ocean compared with the legislation done by Departments without scrutiny. Our role is to highlight it and change that system, which has been in place for half a century.

In terms of effectiveness, we absolutely should inform the media that we are operating. One of the key things we can do is continue with annual reports. We had an annual report in the first iteration of this committee. The annual report allows us to highlight which Departments are engaging and not engaging. That will give a focus and focus minds. In fairness, one Department engaged fully in the previous Oireachtas and two Ministers came before us. To strengthen that, it will be important that we produce a report, not item by item but an overview that allows the patterns to be made public and clear around who is engaging effectively.

I add to the suggestion of outward communication. If it is possible, I ask that the Chair, the clerk or others meet with the Chairs and clerks of the committees, that is, the working group of committee Chairs, because it would be really useful if those committees to which we are likely to begin referring directives and various statutory instruments in the spring are ready to receive them and planning for that within their work programmes. That would allow us to follow the thread through. It would be worth having some communication or engagement because, as I say, we know some committees spend a lot of time on EU communications while other committees do not. This is another thing that is different from the previous communications strategy. It is at a different level. Engagement with committees, Chairs and clerks could be constructive.

I am going to try to keep meetings to one hour because I am conscious that members are on numerous committees already, and I do not want to add to their burden by having another committee.

Members should bear in mind that this committee and the Seanad will be processing more legislation than the Dáil. In some ways it is nearly 100% more. That is why members’ presence is greatly appreciated. The fact that they volunteered or were asked to serve on this committee, having served already on other committees, is something I appreciate. I propose that we write to the Taoiseach, all Cabinet members and the Chairs of the committees in relation to the role of this committee. In the new year, we will write to the TDs and Senators outlining the role of the committee. We will develop a communication strategy in relation to the work we are doing to make sure people understand what we are doing. As part of that, I will ask for the Chair of the chairs’ committee, at its next meeting, to allow me to outline what we will be doing, so that members, along with the clerks, can ask questions.

At some stage, we might develop a scorecard by Government Department. That would be the easiest thing to do. We will mark which of them did not meet the six-month deadline and by how long. We will also, maybe on a monthly basis, write to the relevant Minister if a directive is late. The citizens of Ireland are entitled to know what laws are being passed on their behalf before they are enacted in law by a Minister, literally with a stroke of a pen.

As there are no other questions, we will adjourn, sine die. We will see everybody in the new year. I look forward to the work of the committee. If anyone has any questions or queries, please give me a call. We will begin our work on these initiatives in 2026.