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

and systematic approach to report writing and to the circulation of such reports
within the department. In other departments, individual officers appear to have
more autonomy on report writing. In the Foreign ministry, officers attending
meetings at all levels in the hierarchy prepare reports that provide an overview of
where the negotiations lie, the approaches of the other member states and likely
future developments. COREPER reports are used to prepare for up-coming
Council meetings. Officials from the Department of Agriculture attending
Management Committees meetings send immediate reports of votes and policy
developments to their Divisions and the EU Division. The circulation of reports
within the Irish system is dealt with below.
Once a law is passed or a programme agreed at the negotiating stage, the focus
changes to the reception of the output of EU decision making into the national
system. The reception of the EU into the national brings an extra national set of
institutions and policy makers into sub-national levels of government and into the
wider society. There are four different ways in which the EU requires a response
from the national systems at the post-decision phase of the process. First, EC
law must be transposed, implemented and enforced at national level. Second,
Irish public bodies must comply with reporting and notification procedures and
demands in areas such as public procurement, state aids and competition policy.
Third, Irish public bodies must participate in processes of soft policy co-ordination
and peer review in areas such as justice, social provision, budgetary policy,
health and education. The demands here range from engagement with peer
review processes to the preparation of reports for submission to the Council or
Commission. Fourth, Irish public and private bodies engage in seeking funding
from programmes under the EU budget.
The role of the Core Executive during this phase of the policy process is
substantial but more limited than the negotiating phase. The Core Executive is
responsible for the transposition of EC law in the Irish system. Individual
Government departments are responsible for implementation. The drafting of
Bills or statutory instruments is the responsibility of the Office of Parliamentary
Counsel, which is located in the Attorney general’s Office. The Office is organised
into three groups and following instructions from a department, the relevant
group drafts the Bill or SI. In order to streamline the preparation of legislation,
the Government has instituted a Legislation Committee with responsibility for
managing the timing and processing of new legislation. EU business is not
sufficiently integrated into the work of the Government Legislation Committee