Seán Haughey (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for coming in. In particular, I welcome our Polish colleague. I wish Mr. Cardiff's successor well. I hope Mr. Murphy gets over the final hurdles to his appointment – I imagine he will.

I really have no questions. It is a good report. The citizens of Ireland and the EU can be reassured by this report. Certainly, things seem to be improving. There is a general view among citizens, especially Eurosceptics, that the EU is wasteful and so forth in respect of many of the things that it does. That is not the problem of the European Court of Auditors. The court is handed the schemes to audit. The issues of waste and expenditure generally are probably more policy issues. The court simply audits the schemes handed down.

I was going to ask about Ireland and whether there was anything specific to Ireland that we should be concerned about. Our guests have answered that in the presentation. I note that there is an issue in respect of reimbursement payments and that the court is taking measures to deal with that as well.

We are reassured by the report. While the European Court of Auditors is not a glamorous institution and while we discuss major issues in the committee, including nothing less than the future of Europe, what the court is doing is extremely important.