Mr. John McCarthy:

Yes. This is our second cycle of surveillance and we had more interaction with the Commission from 2010 on as part of the programme but everyone is now in the same boat. There are three bilateral meetings with the Commission leading up to the adoption of the country-specific recommendations, CSRs, the first of which took place in December. If memory serves me correctly, there is another at the end of this month and a bilateral meeting after publication of the single analytical document.

This single analytical document is published in mid-March. That is all about where the Commission and the member states see the priorities and what can be done. There is far more engagement with the Commission.

There is also a noticeable change at committee level, by which I mean the various European committees such as the Economic Policy Committee, EPC, the Economic and Financial Committee, EFC, and so forth. There is far more multilateral surveillance than would have been the case in the past. In the past, a state would have drawn up a policy and the Commission and that member state would have discussed it across the table, with the representatives of the other member states on their BlackBerries. Now, because there is a greater recognition that policies adopted in one member state have implications for Ireland and policies adopted in Ireland have implications for other member states, there is much more peer review, peer pressure and multilateral surveillance. It is not just between the Commission and the member states, but the member states trying to act in unison.

There has been a change. I would not call it a sea change, but as I mentioned earlier the process is evolving over time with incremental changes each year. For example, all euro area member states must have the same budgetary timelines, so they all submit budgets by mid-October. They are peer reviewed by officials, which then leads up to a ministerial assessment of every country's budget. There is far more interaction between the member states and also between the member states and the Commission.

I am sorry if I have spoken for too long.