Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank the Deputy. On corporate sponsorship, I regard that as a successful initiative for us. It was a complaint we got relating to the fact that when new EU member states hold a council, which can be an expensive process for them, they invite corporate sponsors to sponsor them. The concern was they would be given privileged access to the Commission, to regulation-making and so on. Initially, the Council said it was nothing to do with it and that it had to do with the member states. We disagreed because people see the member state acting as President of the Council. Latterly, the Council has accepted our view that it has a role. We did not recommend that sponsorship should end but that the Council should develop guidelines on what is and is not acceptable. The Council has accepted that. Germany did not have any sponsorship. Portugal has sponsorship but we await the Council guidelines on that.

I can get back to the Deputy on the portal but I think it had to do with the fact that a lot of money is about to be put into the member states.

People need to know where that money is going, who is getting it, who is accountable and so on. It was in that context that we suggested a portal to the Commission. This would allow us to easily see what Ireland or any given company got. I am not sure where we are on that but we will certainly get back to the Deputy on it. I thank him for raising the nice, happy friendly thing I do, which is the awards system. We are now on our third iteration. We did not know if anyone would enter this time but we got almost 40 applications from all over the EU, the agencies obviously being spread all over the place. We are looking at those applications now and I believe we are to have the awards ceremony at the end of June. The President of the Commission, Dr. von der Leyen, has agreed to say a few words at that. I am sure she was delighted to be in a position to say nice things about the great things the EU administration does. I thank her for that.