Mr. Des O'Leary:

With regard to the tax issues and setting priorities for a six-month period, one must take account of issues that are live at the time one assumes the Presidency. It is not possible for a small country to select issues it wishes to pursue, as its role in the Presidency is that of chairman. On the issue of tax, we have prioritised a number of areas and we feel we have made considerable progress on those. Within my specific area, we hope to reach agreement on the taxation of savings directive at ECOFIN next week. This issue has been a long-running saga.

With regard to the financial transactions tax, we pursued that issue at a number of meetings. Eleven countries have come to an agreement on that, but we are not among them. On issues of indirect tax, there have been a number of dossiers, particularly with regard to VAT, and we are satisfied we have achieved our objectives so far. There is another month to go, but we feel we have made considerable progress.