Mr. Gerry Kiely:

In response to Deputy Harkin, I am not sure why we might need a stick in terms of having countries present their national recovery and resilience plans. The carrot is there for all countries. Without a plan, a country gets no money and all countries are going to get money. In Ireland's case, on the grants side, the figure is €1.2 billion or €1.3 billion. I do not think we will have any difficulty getting the plans.

We may have some long, difficult discussions on their content but this is normal with all programmes. Covid will have an impact for some time so we are not just talking about the €750 billion. The plans for future access to EU funding under the multi-annual financial framework, be they related to the Common Agricultural Policy, structural funds, cohesion funding or Horizon 2021-2027, will be influenced by Covid. I do not believe the plans for accessing EU funds that will be put forward now will be totally different from those of the future so I do not see any difficulty.

On the cancer strategy, I will have to revert to the Deputy. Covid is dominating everything for the moment, just as it is at member state level. That does not mean all work has stopped in the Commission in other areas. It is going on but it has not crossed my desk. I am not aware of it but I will certainly be happy to check what is happening and revert to the Deputy.

Given that health is a member state competence, although it has almost become an EU competence because of Covid, but only in the area of Covid, it has not crossed my radar that a shortage of flu vaccine has been a problem in other member states. If there is a shortage of the flu vaccine here, I am sure the problem will arise in other member states.

On co-operation with the UK, we are still in a transition phase. The UK is participating at the EU committees as an observer. There is full co-operation. What form that co-operation will take in the future depends on what happens in the negotiations taking place this week and the kind of agreement we will have in the end. Certainly, in the context of the pandemic, everyone would want co-operation to continue.