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

have one unit responsible for the circulation of information but in some cases
there are multiple information points, particularly if a department is responsible
for more than one Council formation. These units are responsible for the internal
circulation of information within departments and the circulation lists can range in
size from two to sixty. Most departments operate on the basis of lists based on
the nature of the information. Some departments have a tradition of very wide
circulation of information within departments whereas others tend to confine
circulation to particular sectors. The former is more likely the case if a ministry
has a clear sectoral mandate such as agriculture whereas in ministries with multisectoral
responsibilities, information circulation is more likely to be restricted. In
areas with a tradition of secrecy such as JHA or financial affairs, the circulation of
information is also more likely to be limited. In assessing the openness to
sharing material, it was suggested that the decision to establish a committee on
JHA was a good thing as it would force the Department of Justice, a traditionally
secretive department to air issues outside the department. In contrast, the
Department of Finance was perceived in the following terms, ‘Finance know what
they are doing but don’t share information’ and that the EU activities of the
Department of Finance are not ‘subject to robust scrutiny’ (Interview 56,
12.03.02). Thus although there is considerable sharing of information, there are
also pockets of the system where information is harvested and not shared.
While Foreign Affairs is formally responsible for the circulation of information,
individual departments do not rely solely on it for their information needs. In fact
in a survey of EU co-ordination units in 1999, only two domestic departments—
the Taoiseach’s department and the Marine cited Foreign Affairs as their most
important source of information (Laffan, 2001). In addition, the Attorney
General’s Office also cited Foreign Affairs as the main source of information. For
all other departments, their officials in Brussels were the primary source of
information on EU developments. This underlines the crucial vertical link between
the home departments and their people in Brussels. Foreign Affairs was the
second most important source of information for all departments with the
exception of Agriculture, which ranked it in fourth place behind the Council
Secretariat and the Commission.
Co-ordination
The key structures designed to co-ordinate Ireland’s European policy are set out
in Section II above. These are the core-core —Foreign Affairs, Taoiseach’s
Department and Finance that form the innermost core of the system. All