Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Cardiff. I will begin with a couple of questions. The first is with regard to the comment that Ireland is now a net contributor to the European Union by a factor of approximately €100 million a year, or €20 for every man, woman and child in the country. Bearing in mind we are still a situation where the economy is running a deficit and we spend more money than we take in, how does our net contribution compare with other countries? Is Ireland the only country in deficit that is borrowing more money to pay into Europe or are other countries in a similar position?

My next question is on the error margins on slides 16 and 17. Slide 16 shows three years of error margins for the EU budget and slide 17 just shows 2013 and 2014. Does Mr. Cardiff have a view on whether these are stochastic changes or whether there is a trend? I cannot tell from just three data points. I am not sure this is not just a random walk through error margins or whether they tell us something on which we can draw conclusions with regard to whether things are improving in certain areas or disimproving in others. I am not sure Mr. Cardiff has the figures with him but no doubt he has examined them back at base. When we look at the trend over seven or eight data points, what does it tell us with regard to the overall European Union budget and the spending areas? Do we see any improvement or is it just a level of randomness with regard to these error margins?