EUROPEAN DIARY:With Ireland's reputation on the floor, a quality candidate is needed for the EU's audit body
IRELAND’S SEAT on the European Court of Auditors falls vacant next February. That’s light years away in political terms, but Taoiseach Enda Kenny will have to make his mind up soon enough. The court wants a name by mid-September.
This will be the first big European appointment to fall to the Government since it took power in March. While thousands of political appointments are in the Government’s gift at home, relatively few come its way in Europe. With Ireland’s reputation on the floor due to the bailout, the necessity to send quality Irish candidates to big European jobs is obvious.
Although whispers in Dublin suggest the question of Ireland’s next European commissioner came up on the margins of Fine Gael’s Coalition talks with Labour, the post in the Luxembourg-based court is said not to have featured in any significant way in the talks between the two parties. It will now.
The court oversees the EU’s accounts, a hugely important task given the vast amounts of public money that flow through the European system. Membership of the body carries great prestige, all the trappings of high European office, and is exceptionally well paid: the salary is about €180,000. It is a low-key place, however, and rarely makes headlines.
The incumbent in the Irish seat is Eoin O’Shea, an accountant and barrister in his mid-30s who succeeded Maire Geoghegan- Quinn when she went to the EU Commission. He was appointed last year to see out the remainder of her six-year mandate, which expires next February at the same time as the mandates of seven other court members.
The court’s president, Vítor Caldeira, has asked the governments concerned to make their nominations within the next nine weeks as each must be approved by the budgetary control committee of the European Parliament. Given the number of seats to be filled, Caldeira wants to move early to minimise potential for disruption if any of the nominees runs into trouble with MEPs.
O’Shea’s personal preference, it is believed, is to stay on in the job to complete a full mandate. Always busy, he combined his legal career with the chairmanship of a marketing company and was chief executive of the Institute of Directors in Ireland and president of the Institute of Management Consultants in Ireland.
He falls within the Fianna Fáil circle, however, so there is little expectation in Dublin and Brussels that Kenny would leave him in situ.
O’Shea’s proximity to the party is clear, although he had no public profile to speak of before his appointment. For many years he kept an eye on dozens of local newspapers for Bertie Ahern, providing clippings for the then taoiseach to keep abreast of grass roots issues throughout the State.
In 2007, the Fianna Fáil-Green administration appointed him under the St Andrews Agreement to review the North-South bodies set up under the Good Friday pact. He was also appointed to the audit committee of the Garda.
There are precedents for court members appointed near the end of one mandate to serve another. Indeed, Charlie Haughey stepped across Fianna Fáil lines in 1987 to reappoint Fine Gaeler Richie Ryan. But while the court favours continuity and expects each member to serve at least a full term, the decision rests exclusively with Dublin.
The chatter suggests the Government would sooner send one of its own to fill the post. It has little incentive to do otherwise, although this raises an interesting question as regards the sharing of the spoils between Fine Gael and Labour.
As the dominant Government party, Fine Gael probably expects to take the next Irish seat in the commission when the term of the current EU executive ends in late 2014. The commission is clearly more powerful than the court, after all, so a Labourite may go to Luxembourg in the interests of coalition harmony.
It is difficult to say who might be in the frame.
However, the drive to restore Ireland’s international standing would be poorly served if the seat went to any old party grandee as a pre-retirement gift. The situation is far too urgent for that.
People in the know say the court’s membership can be divided between activist members, who shoulder most of the work, and others who are not necessarily busy a lot of the time.
Ireland’s interests lie in appointing someone who would be determined to make something of the job, demonstrating at the highest levels that there is more to the State’s European engagement than the bailout and life-support for crippled banks.
Jobs for the boys are one thing. The epic struggle to rebuild the State’s renown is another. In the weeks ahead, this will be one to watch.
