Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In my experience, the method adopted is that one decides the policy, includes it in a Finance Bill and indicates that there are state aid considerations. After the will of the Oireachtas is identified, one goes to the Commission to examine its attitude to the policy. Of course one tries to tailor it in a way that is in accordance with state aid guidelines. The Commission needs to examine the legislation before it will consider it. The sequence is to decide the policy, draft the legislation and then submit it to Europe. The Commission can be quite slow because it has lots of applications from different parts of the Union. I am not saying it deliberately procrastinates, but one would get that impression at times.