Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I think much was achieved in the last six months of the year. One issue that was a priority for Lithuania was the Eastern Partnership and signing an agreement. For reasons we are all aware of, that did not quite work out, but I wonder if the ambassador could give us an outline of where he thinks things are at the moment.

Lithuania will be the last of the three Baltic states to join the eurozone. Estonia was the first, Latvia joined this year, and Lithuania is joining next January. Several members of the committee and I travelled to Riga last November and we had a meeting with the central bank there. Its officials outlined the Latvian preparations for membership, and we were all very impressed with the detail that they went into to ensure the transition would be a success. Everybody here would agree that the transition was very well managed and very successful. One question that they were not sure about was in respect of how soon the population would increase its support for the euro. Some surveys were done in Latvia prior to the introduction which showed that a certain element of the population favoured the old currency. What is the situation in Lithuania? Is there a groundswell of public sentiment in favour of the euro? If you are not doing it already, you should make contact with the Latvians to see what they did, because they had a very successful transition and it would be useful to talk to them about it.