Mr. John Murphy:

The only comment I wish to make on that is that Ireland, as a member state, has an extremely good record on transposition. In the run-up to our Presidency, we put considerable effort into ensuring, across the government system, that we got as many transpositions that were late or under pressure out of the way before the Presidency started. Generally speaking, Departments and their agencies have a range of directives on the go at any point in time. It is not so easy to address something well ahead of the transposition date. As I stated, this was an unanticipated problem; these things happen. One must deal with the legal advice one receives. If one must start again, one must start again. It would be better to do so than to proceed only to discover one has not transposed a directive appropriately, thus creating a much more difficult problem for those affected by it.