Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 408: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the reason the Government withheld information from the European Committee on Social Rights on the State's record in providing social and economic rights to its citizens in breach of its commitment to provide reports on its implementation of the revised European Social Charter since March 2004 to the committee. [6553/06]

Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The Council of Europe has standard reporting procedures regarding the revised social charter which apply to all contracting parties — that is, those member states that have signed and ratified the charter. Ireland signed and ratified the revised social charter on 4 November 2000. The revised social charter has 31 articles.

The reporting is done in a "two-cycle" process: (a) the nine "core" articles are Articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 16, 19 and 20 — these are the most important articles from the Council of Europe's perspective and were the subject of our first report on the implementation of the revised social charter, submitted to Strasbourg in May 2004 in respect of the period ending 31 December 2002; (b) the remaining 22 articles are the "non-core" articles of the revised social charter. These articles are the subject of our second report, due in 2004, on the implementation of the revised social charter. We have already submitted reports on three of these articles to Strasbourg. The remainder of the articles will be reported upon as the material is received from Departments and agencies and edited by my Department.

In preparing reports, my Department consults both internally and with most other Departments in relation to updating material on any relevant legislative and/or administrative changes that have taken place which impact on our implementation of the revised social charter. Given the range of issues to be covered and the number of Departments to be consulted, gathering and clarifying up-to-date responses on a wide range of topics can be quite demanding, having regard to the steady growth in other reporting obligations on all Departments.

In light of the substantially increased reporting requirements under the revised social charter — involving 31 articles as opposed to 19 in the original social charter from 1961 — my Department undertook to review criticisms of Ireland made by the European Committee of Social Rights, which examines in detail, individual member states' reports on the implementation of the revised social charter, and how implementation might be made more effective in the future.

As part of this process, my officials had a meeting in Dublin on 4 October 2005 with a delegation from the Council of Europe, including its Secretariat and members of the European Committee of Social Rights. At that meeting, the delays in submitting our second and third reports on the implementation of the revised social charter were discussed. It was acknowledged by the Council of Europe delegation that some of the articles in our second report had already been submitted to Strasbourg. However, as we had in parallel done some work on our third report — which updates Ireland's reporting on the nine "core" articles for the period ending 31 December 2004 — my Department agreed to prioritise the completion of the third report before reverting to the completion of the second report.

The reason for this approach is that the third report is effectively an update of the first report on the nine "core" articles, and it was anticipated that this report could be completed quickly. In this regard, my Department now expects to submit the third report within the next few weeks. My Department will then complete the outstanding articles of the second report and this process should be completed over the coming months. Accordingly, no information will be withheld from the Council of Europe and it is the intention to eliminate backlogs in reporting developments as soon as possible.

I consider that the revised social charter is being properly implemented by Ireland, having regard to our national legislation and administrative practices. Any queries raised by the European Committee of Social Rights are, and will continue to be, addressed as part of the reporting procedures laid down by the Council of Europe.