Sir, – I chaired the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, which regularly received updates from Ireland’s members of the Constitutional Convention, which gave rise to the Lisbon Treaty. The Oireachtas should similarly get regular feedback on Brexit discussions. The views of the representatives of the people in our national parliament should be heard in advance.
As a former MEP and minister for European Affairs, I am concerned that we might take our eyes off the ball. The open border between North and South has the support of the Government, the Northern Executive and the British government and it seems unlikely that the EU will want to impose change. There are many precedents for porous borders between EU member states and neighbours outside the Union. This is, of course, of vital importance but we will have other concerns.
For example, Bruegel, a Brussels think tank, recently published a paper, “Is Brexit an opportunity to reform the European Parliament?”. By reform is implied a redistribution of seats in parliament when the 73 UK MEPs depart. Will these seats, or some of them, be redistributed to existing members? Or will the existing arrangements for “regressive proportionality” (ie the more populated a state the higher the number of people required to elect an MEP) be diluted? If so, will Ireland’s number of MEPs, already reduced from 15 to 13, then 12 and now 11, be further reduced at the same time as the North’s three MEPs disappear? If our numbers reduce further, will we be able to monitor vital committee decisions?
Will there be an effort to address public scepticism about EU institutions by, say, removing the right of each member state to have a commissioner?
Other national parliaments will be watchful, and ours should be too. – Yours, etc,
GAY MITCHELL,
Dublin 6.