Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Apologies have been received from Senators Maria Byrne, Niall Blaney, Maria Sherlock, Lorraine Clifford-Lee and Michael McDowell.

The purpose of today's meeting is to have an engagement with our new Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Minister, I welcome you to the committee. Heartiest congratulations on your appointment. It is a very interesting role and a challenging one, especially ahead of 2026, when we will take over the Presidency of the European Union.

This committee has an important role in looking at directives, deciding on them and advising sectoral committees as to whether scrutiny is required. In most cases it is. It is the start of the journey because our committee is less than a year old so, to a large extent, we are finding our feet. We have had a lot of toing and froing with the various Departments, particularly that of the Minister of State. Our job is to ensure as much scrutiny as possible. Certainly, when there are infringements, we believe we have a role. We are changing our Standing Orders to increase the role of the committee in order to ensure that we have as wide a brief as possible and that our committee is as effective as possible. We would be interested to hear the views of the Minister of State on the role of the committee and we look forward to working with her and her officials in the time ahead.

With that, the Minister of State is very welcome to the committee and I invite her to make her opening remarks.