James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That concludes the opening remarks from our visitors. I will respond briefly and go back around members. I thank our guests for their remarks. As I said at the outset, I think we understand and share - in most cases if not all - the frustrations across Europe. We are not necessarily wearing the green jersey today. We realise there are issues. That is why we have been delving into them ourselves. Our goal is to improve the output, efficiency and the processes. We want to address the issues domestically, which will have European implications, because obviously, the remit is Europe-wide. That is something we are very keen to do.

Just to pick up on some of the last comments in terms of where this report goes, our own meeting and our own deliberations, the report that we produced will go through to our main plenary Chamber at the start of next month. It will be debated in the Dáil Chamber, which is our principal Chamber, with the Government Ministers etc. in attendance. That is the next round of the process. It is scheduled for 6 October. On reports, like every good committee we produce a lot of reports, but the committee does not have executive powers to enact the reports. However, we can continue to champion them. We are doing that. Indeed, there will be another opportunity for members to do that in the Chamber in two weeks' time. I think the meeting today is quite well timed, in the sense that I am sure we will take outputs from this that we will actually carry over into that debate. Ms Daly mentioned the legislative changes that may be required in order to enable the DPC to do some of the things that have been recommended by us.

I want to go round the table and let everyone make an opening remark. Perhaps we will go in the order that people are seated, for simplicity. We will start with Deputy Kenny.