Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Acting Chairperson (Mr Maskey): I welcome Andrew Elliott and Una Downey. Do not take it personally that people did not want to chair the meeting; they are not afraid of you, just a bit shy today. Andrew, I believe that this is the first time that you have appeared before the Committee in this capacity, so I look forward to hearing what you have to say today and to working with you in the future. You may want to make some opening remarks, so please feel free to do so.

Mr Andrew Elliott (Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister): Thank you, Chair. It is good to get the chance to come before the Committee. Una and I are normally based in Brussels, although I have staff here in Belfast who work on European issues. Una is the senior liaison officer of the group of liaison officers established under the Barroso task force to take forward a range of issues under different themes and so on that are priorities for Northern Ireland, and I thought that it would be valuable for her to accompany me to today's meeting.

I last worked in Brussels 20 years ago, and I went back again in March. I do not know everything about the modern Europe, although I know some of the stuff about the old Europe. I have seen a lot of changes in those 20 years, and I thought that there was no harm in saying that. One of the most obvious was that, in the olden days, I did not have the backing of a devolved Government or Assembly, and that clearly changes the dynamic enormously when you are engaging with European institutions. The climate is an awful lot warmer in Brussels today, and, if this year was anything to go on, it was regularly over 30 degrees. It has been quite an acclimatisation, and I got no sympathy whatsoever from anyone back home when I said that because, apparently, this has been one of the worst summers over here in a long time.

One of the remarkable things in Brussels is that there are Belgian soldiers everywhere. It is an entirely different city in that respect, and it feels an awful lot less safe than it used to as a city in which we spend time. The European project for Northern Ireland seems far more sophisticated and elaborate than it was in those days. We have definitely moved into a different level of engagement. That is not to say that there is not lots more that we could do, things that we could do better and so on, and I will come on to some of that.

There are two issues on the agenda. There is the 2014-15 priorities. I am sorry, Chair: should I stop for a moment to give you a chance to —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): No, no. You can carry on.

Mr Maskey: He is quick on the uptake.

Mr Elliott: One of the challenges of working in this area that I have uncovered is that things take time. I know that the Committee is concerned about the reporting on some of the things that we are doing, particularly the priorities, and that we do not report in a timely enough manner. In the time that I have been in the post, I have not been able to completely overcome that problem. Therefore, I am unable to say very much today about the 2014-15 European priorities of the Executive, because the final stages of approval of the report on them has not yet been completed. I will come back to that issue in a little while. However, I will be able to talk about the 2015-16 priorities that are in front of the Committee in draft and which you have had the chance to consider. We have taken a slightly different approach to those this year. They were already partly drafted when I arrived in post, and I sought to inject a little bit of change. However, I was concerned that if I had tried to inject too much change, it would have caused a lot of delay because there are so many Departments involved in the exercise.

You will see that I have tried to put the focus on four quadrants — four areas as it were — where I think it is important for us to work. The first is collaboration, as it is at the heart of everything that we try to do in relation to Europe, and when we do not collaborate well, we are not as successful. There is a huge issue of collective responsibility at work in relation to the European agenda and in trying to make the most of the opportunities and, indeed, to tackle the threats that arise at a European level.

The second area that I want to focus on is capacity building. Some Departments in Northern Ireland are enormously capable in their engagement with European affairs, and there are other stakeholders who engage very effectively in Europe. Of course, there are areas of Departments where people have very little contact with Europe, and we need to continue to work at that to make sure that we have a team of people who are very effective at making the most of the European opportunity. There are major opportunities, in a Brussels context in particular, to learn from others and to see the best of what is happening across the European Union in different areas and to see the vision that we can obtain for ourselves from that. That is certainly a priority that I want to see. We also have an opportunity to allow others to learn from us, because there are many areas where this region does things rather well, and we showcase, on a fairly regular basis, some of those things in Europe. That engagement is extremely valuable to us.

Right through those four quadrants is the issue of the quality of the engagement. In my advice to Ministers I will put an emphasis on the need to engage with one another and with Europe. It is not about quantity; it is about quality.

As for what we have been up to, in the last year since I have been there, we have had two Commissioners visit Northern Ireland: Commissioner Hogan from Agriculture and Commissioner Katainen in relation to strategic investment. Those were very important and valuable engagements, involving a number of Ministers from the Executive. We had also planned to have the Regional Development Commissioner, Commissioner Cretu, visit us at the beginning of July. At fairly short notice, that visit did not take place. I am extremely hopeful that we will be able to work on that issue and have her visit us again in the not too distant future, as there are some announcements that we would like her to make, and it would be good if she could announce them here.

As for ministerial visits to Brussels, in my time — that is since March — we have seen Danny Kennedy, Michelle O'Neill, Jonathan Bell, Jennifer McCann and Simon Hamilton in the Brussels office, and they have carried out a range of activities in Brussels. It has been extremely helpful to us to have that level of ministerial attention. Apart from anything else, knowing in advance that a Minister is coming over means that it is sometimes possible to get that Minister to do something that creates an increased focus, which is extremely valuable in engaging at the Brussels level.

We published a Brussels office report, which I think is with the Committee now. That will hopefully be quickly circulated to the other Assembly Committees. I engaged recently with Ministers in OFMDFM to ask them if I could please send my report directly to other Ministers, because I realised that other Ministers do not routinely receive the Brussels report, and they have agreed to that. So I plan to issue future reports to all Ministers. I think that it is important that all Ministers are together and are on the same page, as it were, in what they see from the Brussels office. If the Committee is willing and the systems allow me, I would really like to apply that approach to the Committees as well and just issue it to everyone, but I am in the hands of the Committee. I would not want to force you down a path that you were not comfortable in going down.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Are you aware of any rules that prevent you doing that?

Mr Elliott: I think that it is just a process thing as much as anything else. This Committee is the lead Committee on the topic. Therefore, out of protocol, we just send it to you, and then it is issued. That means that it is extremely slow in getting to the others. In parallel with sending it to all Ministers, I think that it would be really rather good if we could just send it out to all the Committee Chairs or to the Committees.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): OK.

Mr Elliott: The pace with which we process reports, set up new priorities and so on is a concern. From reading previous Hansard reports, I know that that has repeatedly been a concern for the Committee. The barriers to improving that are not small; it will take me a little bit of time to work on that issue. The closest parallel that I can find is in the Department of Agriculture, which was my last posting. Its Committee had enormous concerns about the pace of payments to farmers, and I discovered that it was extremely hard to get that accelerated. Given time and energy and so on, we turned that around. This is probably even harder to turn around because the barriers are human more than IT ones, but we will work hard on it. With good will and really good collaboration and engagement with other Departments, I hope that we can make improvements in that, but it is a challenge. It is a challenge simply because there are so many different people contributing at different levels to the final agreement that everything has been verified and agreed and is ready to issue.

As for where we are at in Brussels at the moment, we are awaiting the next Commission work plan for the following year, which will come out in October/November time. Just today we had the state of the union speech from President Juncker, the President of the Commission, which gives you a real indication of where the focus of the Commission and the European institutions is at the moment. He spoke for a lot of the time about refugees and then went on to talk about Greece, the euro and the EU economy in general. The third area that he spoke about was a fairer deal for Britain and how that needed to be accompanied by a fairer deal for all the other member states. He spoke about the Ukraine and he spoke about climate change. Those were his key issues. He then went on to say that he was not going to talk about — and in doing so talked about — the Cyprus peace deal and farmers and milk. That is the broad spectrum of issues that we continue to focus on, while trying to stay focused on the priorities for Departments and Ministers here and on providing as much support as we can to advance those priorities. I am happy to take questions, Chair.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): I apologise for being late. Thank you for your presentation, and I look forward to working with you. You will be aware that the Committee takes seriously its role scrutinising and supporting the work of the Executive on European issues. You touched on the report on 2014-15 priorities. Obviously, a key recommendation of the Committee report on the inquiry into the Barroso task force was that the Executive publish their annual European priorities document in a more timely fashion, and certainly within the first quarter of the respective year. I know that you have touched on that, but can you give us any more detail why there is such a delay to the 2014-15 priority report?

Mr Elliott: Challenging officials and Departments to achieve targets is a really good thing. I will be engaging with Ministers on this, and they may take a different view. My view is that we have created something that is quite elaborate and complex with a very large number of targets, and I have not seen, from looking at some of the other really effective players at a regional level in Europe, that level of complexity elsewhere. One of the big themes in Brussels at the moment is simplification. I am interested in trying to simplify our European priorities a wee bit, perhaps by reducing the number of targets. I am not trying to wriggle out of things, but I think that we have an awful lot of bean-counting targets, such as how many meetings we had. For me, the issue is about quality of engagement. The numbers are important and they are an indicator of activity, but you could have one Horizon 2020 project that transforms this region economically and 1,000 others that never really do anything. We have to get a balance between quantity and quality. I will be trying to engage with other stakeholders, and I value the views of the Committee on techniques or tactics that we could use to try to accelerate the process.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): It is encouraging that you are taking that forward. Can you not be more specific about what is causing the delay in the report on EU priorities in 2014-15?

Mr Elliott: There are a lot of returns to obtain from a lot of Departments. Part of the issue is that the figures that we collect and collate have to be verified and that can take some time.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Do you have an expected date for publication?

Mr Elliott: I am loath to give you a date, although we will continue to press and encourage and cajole. I have found myself tied up quite a bit in Brussels over the last few months for a number of reasons, but I have found that it is incredibly important for me in OFMDFM to engage much more closely with other Departments, to build closer relationships with other Departments, and to use that to find ways to accelerate the process. In other words, knowing the person who can help to accelerate something that is stuck in the system can be quite important.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Do you have an expected date for the publication of the EU priorities for 2015-16?

Mr Elliott: That will depend on a number of factors, one of the most important of which is whether or not the Committee is content with what we have at the moment. If the Committee is content, I will want to accelerate that through the system as quickly as I can. I understand that the process involves going first of all to Ministers in OFMDFM, to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, and then on to the Executive. Again, I can influence, but I cannot control. However, I will do my utmost to influence and shape things so that that goes through quickly. I do not want to give you a promise, particularly as there are uncertainties.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): OK. Hopefully, that will be a prompt process.

You touched on the serious refugee crisis that is getting more severe by the day. President Juncker of the European Commission announced plans for a swift, determined and comprehensive response to the crisis. What action is being taken on these issues in Brussels on behalf of the Northern Ireland Executive?

Mr Elliott: The refugee issue is being felt very strongly in Brussels. There is a large number of refugees turning up, even in the city itself, and Belgian authorities are struggling to manage the situation. However, it is nothing like as difficult as the situation in Hungary, Greece and Italy, which are the three main countries affected.

As for the Northern Ireland position, the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister is seized of this issue. It recognises that the Home Office is taking the lead on the issue, and the UK will obviously take its position as a member state as to what extent it wants to contribute to tackling the problem. However, I do know that there is significant activity on that issue in my Department at the moment. Interdepartmental engagement on how that will be handled is ongoing.

As for the Brussels contribution, I have been asked to explore whether there are any valuable models that we could learn from elsewhere in Europe. Through engagement with some of the regions that we know best, we will see whether there is a model for doing something well or to better that we could pick up on. I will be exploring that. It is relatively recent work, but we will be getting into that and trying to contribute something to it if we possibly can. It is not an area or issue that the office has been particularly involved in before, as far as I am aware, so we are breaking new ground with that. However, I hope that if we come up with something valuable, we will feed it through to the folk in OFMDFM who are working on these issues. The First Minister and the deputy First Minister are extremely keen to respond to the problem constructively.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): I think that most of us would agree that we have a moral obligation to do so. It is encouraging to hear that work is being done across the levels of Government. The working together with Europe of local government, regional government and national government through the Home Office, as you mentioned, will be vital to ensure that we respond to this as quickly, effectively and compassionately as possible.

I think that some members want to ask supplementary questions on that.

Ms McGahan: No, my question is on a different point.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Does anybody else want to come in there?

Mr Maskey: It is a big area of responsibility and concern to a lot of people, but I am conscious that the Department, and particularly the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, has made interventions on behalf of a number of asylum seekers here whose cases were brought to public and political attention. There are local structures here: there are asylum seekers here, and there are asylum seeker support groups.

I appreciate your saying that the Department is involved and that there is a lot of activity around the issue of the refugee crisis at the moment. I just wanted to underscore the point to make sure that perhaps the Department needs to redouble its efforts with existing refugees who are seeking asylum here and do not have that asylum sorted out and so on. As I have said, the Department supports some of those organisations, and I think that we should support whatever is within our gift to support, as well as redoubling our efforts with Brussels. I also appreciate your comments on that.

Mr Elliott: I will take that back to the officials who are leading on that issue and make sure that they are aware of that concern.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Members, given the urgency and seriousness of the refugee crisis, I propose that we write to the Department requesting detail of action that is being taken with the UK Government by OFMDFM. You may recall that 80% of respondents to the consultation on the racial equality strategy felt that there should be a separate strategy for refugee integration. I propose that we also inquire in that correspondence whether there is to be a separate refugee integration strategy, what progress has been made on it and whether it will be expedited, given the seriousness of the crisis. In March, the Committee also heard that the racial equality strategy would be developed over the summer. So, I propose that, in that correspondence, we also seek an update on progress that has been made and the timescale for completion on that strategy. Are members content that we write to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister on those terms?

Mr Maskey: Certainly, Deputy Chair, but could we add something to the effect of, "Could the Department liaise, at an appropriate level, with current refugees or asylum seeker support organisations?".

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): I would like to think that officials working on those issues will be extremely busy at the moment, but it would be very useful to hear from them whether they can update us in detail in person. Are members agreed on that?

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Bronwyn, do you want to ask a question?

Ms McGahan: It is on a separate issue. I welcome Andrew and Una. I have dealt with you before, Andrew, through your farming background. It is obviously coming through in your new brief.

Mr Elliott: I cannot let it go.

Ms McGahan: I know. Have you learned any lessons from your farming background? Did you learn any lessons regarding the drawdown of EU funding that could be brought forward in your new brief, particularly from Ireland, which has an excellent reputation?

Mr Elliott: There were huge lessons in DARD about engaging and how you engage with the European institutions, especially the Commission. Agriculture got into trouble over financial correction. A lot of my time in agriculture was spent trying to bring down the amount of financial correction. We had some success in that; we probably saved tens of millions of pounds that would otherwise have been lost out of the budget. The lessons out of it were: go early; get in early; talk to the people; and do not assume that you will be able to wriggle out of it. You have to take on and confront the issues as soon as you can. In those days, there were enormous lessons to be learned from Sweden. Sweden was faster off the mark than I was in sorting out some very similar issues. They got them resolved more quickly. There are lessons from the agriculture experience for any Department handling structural funds, for example. As I engage with colleagues in other Departments, I talk about those experiences, and I talk about the risks that there are if you do not sort out what the auditors are asking for. Those are areas in which we can work hard to be ahead of the game and to make sure that we do not waste any of the structural funds that are given to us through corrections and money being drawn back.

Ms Una Downey (Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister): The day job of the liaison officer is transferring the knowledge of what somebody else is doing that is good and applying best practice. It is also the building of alliances, which are hugely important to us, building networks, awareness of others, knowing who is in a group, knowing who is good at something and knowing what we can learn from them. Collaboration is the key to delivery of the funding, which is extremely important — nobody would deny that — but it is also key to consolidating our position as a region where people want to work with us as well.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Alex, did you want to ask another question?

Mr Maskey: I did, Deputy Chair; thank you. Andrew, it is on what you said at the end of your remarks and the milk crisis and all the rest. I know that our Ministers and their support are doing good work to try to address some of the current issues around the agriculture and agrifood industry and all the rest of that. Are we happy enough that the necessary support is there to support the Ministers?

Mr Elliott: I think so. I was with Michelle O'Neill. She has been with us two weeks running, and she has been engaging very intensively on the issues to do with the dairy sector. I personally worked very hard on that for her. It is a small office, and if somebody is on leave, somebody else will step in and do the work. We collaborate like that. We did for that event. I think that it went well for her, and I thought that she got the chance to put her messages across very clearly and very well at the different levels. It was a challenging situation, because the options that the Commission wanted to contemplate were more limited than our Minister would have liked, but the points were put across. In particular, I think that Commissioner Hogan understood very clearly the unique situation that farmers in this region face, because of the exchange rate difficulties and the proportion of milk that is exported as powder and so on. There are very special sets of circumstances.

Mr D McIlveen: First of all, you are welcome, Andrew. It is good to see you again, Una, as well.

One of the contributors to the crisis has been the sanctions in Russia. That has played its part, as you know. I have spoken informally to officials in the embassy in London to get them to understand how devolution works. We have no power in Northern Ireland over foreign policy, so we are being punished for something that we cannot change. Is there anything going on in Europe to explain that when it comes to foreign visits or reaching out to countries outside Europe that we do business with and trade with? Is there a programme or structure in place to explain to foreign countries that do not know how Northern Ireland functions what we can and cannot do and where special circumstances should be considered? Whether the Governments decide to act on that or not at a sovereign level is up to them, but it is important that we at least get that message across to ensure that they know how the United Kingdom works?

Mr Elliott: There is, in a sense, a mechanism to do that. One of the primary mechanisms has to be a pincer movement. If it is another European country, the engagement can happen in Brussels, and we have mechanisms to access other countries if we need to talk to them about particular issues. Of course, Russia is not a member of the EU, so you are in a different ball game. We can feed in views and concerns in relation to how the EU is taking decisions in the Ukraine.

Where there are issues in Belfast and where the devolved Administration have issues, they need to go through the lead Department in the member state to make sure that that conduit is being maximised. Ultimately, a member state carries a lot more weight than any region ever will. There are more than 80 regions with offices in Brussels, and the institutions want to deal with a smaller number: they want to deal with 28 member states max until the new ones join.

It is about sometimes working informally — you cannot be too formal about it — building understanding and using the networking that Brussels provides to engage.

Ms Downey: You are perfectly right that it should be done at a member-state level, but there are opportunities for members of the office and the liaison officers to speak to our UKRep to feed them information about issues that we have a view on or feel are not being raised. That may be coming from the devolved Administration to Westminster, but nothing beats speaking to the first secretary, sitting around the table and saying, "You really need to think about this", "We want to know what happened" or "We really would like you to make an intervention". That can all be done very diplomatically, of course.

There are lots of opportunities to speak to other regions. There are collaborations with the other devolved Administrations. If we have a view on something and Scotland, Wales or other member states have a friendly view, there are lots of opportunities in that alliance building to bring it together and get the value from people sitting in Brussels.

Mr Elliott: Sometimes, I get enquiries from Ministers or indirectly through their officials, wanting to know whether taking a certain action would be a good thing. I can take stock with other regions where I know that that has happened and get back and say, "If you're going to go down that road, do it like this, not like that; otherwise it will fail". There are ways and means of making communication better than it would otherwise have been.

One of the most important things — this is something that I preach about every time they allow me to speak — is that the more we can work together, being aware of Ministers' engagement in Europe and being able to support them, the better. Sometimes, it is very easy — other regions experience this too — for messages to go at cross purposes. That leaves the Commission officials scratching their heads in confusion, because they expect to get a single, clear message. That is something that we have to keep working at. Silos exist everywhere, not just in this region, but that is something that we will be doing battle on for some time.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): The Northern Ireland European Regional Forum is obviously an important body in trying to integrate our approach to Europe and avoid the silo mentality. Is it possible to give us an update on your engagement with the European Regional Forum?

Mr Elliott: Yes. I have been engaging about that forum, but I have not actually engaged with it yet. I know that others in the Department who are responsible for the future of the forum are engaging with stakeholders, councils and so on about how that will be taken forward. I do not think that anything has been decided at this point in time, but, if that forum carries on, it will certainly be on my agenda to meet and engage with it at some point in the not-too-distant future. It is just that things seem to be uncertain at the moment.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): OK. Is there any significant update on the Peace IV programme?

Mr Elliott: Yes. Work is ongoing on Peace IV. There has been a great deal of engagement and progress. The Commission fed back its views and considerations on what had been developed so far, and that then required further work. The engagement is intensive across the border and among the various players, such as the Department of Finance and Personnel, as the lead Department; DEL; and the managing authority, which is the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). There has been a great deal of activity and work on that front with a view to getting that programme cleared and in place by the end of the year at the latest, if possible.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): OK. Andrew and Una, thank you very much for being with us today. Hopefully, we will have some more detailed updates and progress on those reports in the near future as your work continues. Thank you.

Mr Elliott: Thank you very much, Chair.