Managing Europe From Home: The Europeanisation of the Irish ...

Public Enterprise, Social, Community and Family Affairs and Tourism, coordinating
and managing national policy remains the over-arching concern. However, each of
these departments to varying degrees found itself dealing with a certain amount of
EU business, in particular as the new mode of governance, the Open Method of
Coordination, is becoming more prevalent in the EU. Two useful indicators of the
European demands on domestic ministries is the number of Council meetings each
department must service and the number of working parties each department must
service (See Tables 1 and 2). These indicators highlight the fact that Europeanisation
is unevenly spread in the Irish system. The Departments of Foreign Affairs, Finance,
Agriculture, Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Justice and Environment are most
heavily involved in the EU system.
The following section will explore the multiple structures put in place within and
between government departments in order to manage relations with Brussels. Each
Department is structured on a functional basis with specific or numerous units within
Departments that deal with the flow of EU business alongside national business.
Departments have also put in place specific EU coordination structures to coordinate
EU business on an intra and inter-departmental basis. Interdepartmental structures
are also to be found in order to manage cross-cutting or horizontal issues of a wideranging
nature. The first component of the core-core of the Irish-EU interface
whose structures we will examine is the Prime Minister’s office, also known as the
Department of the Taoiseach.