Mr. Vjaceslavs Dombrovskis:

We are fully committed to joining the euro on 1 January 2014. Of course, we are counting on Ireland's support. Our compliance with all of the Maastricht criteria is looking pretty good. We are complying in terms of inflation. Our level of public debt is slightly more than 40% and our budget deficit will be 1.4% next year. Even interest rates seem to be falling into line.

I refer to the specific question the Deputy raised in regard to banking union. We fully support the initial proposal for the single supervision body, Union-wide insurance of deposits and single regulation. I think we have some pretty common views on that.

In regard to voting rights, unfortunately, I am not fully familiar with the detail of this, so I am giving my personal opinion. It certainly makes sense for the smaller countries to push for something which may resemble the American system of balancing the interests of the large populous states vis-à-vis those states which are less populous so as not to allow a situation where a few very populous countries could effectively dictate to the others. That should be built into the voting structure. How it should be done is a good question but it definitely should be done.

In regard to the financial transaction tax, our position is somewhat reserved at the moment. We have a relatively large and what I would describe as a two-tiered banking system in which we have a few largely foreign Scandinavian banks, which are the retail banks. We also have quite a few smaller banks which largely service our ex-colleagues in the former Soviet Union. We look at the proposal for the financial transaction tax with some caution. If it is along the lines of taxing advanced financial instruments, like derivatives, that probably would not be of that much concern to us because it is not something our industry is into but it remains to be seen as to what exactly it will be.

On youth unemployment, we have that problem in Latvia. It is not dissimilar to Europe and, I am sure, to Ireland. I am afraid I am not that knowledgeable about that as it is somewhat outside the competence of my specific committee. One would have to get into the area of active labour market policies and so on and I am not that familiar with the details of that.