Mr. Tony Murphy:

We are not a main party to those negotiations or talks. If we come across something in an audit, we raise it as a potential area that should be looked at as we move forward and we will follow up on it in that context. The Deputy mentioned the HSE and other bodies. One of the principles of the EU is subsidiarity, under which certain matters are the prerogative of member states. Going back to what Deputy Howlin said, many social policy areas are still within the prerogative of individual member states. The EU, in effect, gives an amount of money to try to influence policy or improve things in certain areas, but the main driver, as Deputy Ó Murchú said, is at national level.

An issue that can arise in this context is what I refer to as gold-plating. The problem is even worse for us in this regard. If we go to a member state and find it has national rules that are even more onerous than those of the EU, we also have to check those national requirements. Even if the country is okay from an EU rules point of view, if it is not fully respecting its own national rules, then that causes us a problem and may create a formal error. It is not an easy scenario. I think everybody agrees we should try to make it as simple as possible for beneficiaries to benefit from EU funds, respecting, as the Deputy said, that we cannot just give them out without any controls or accountability. We have talked a good deal today about flexibility. Another issue is balance. It is important to get the balance right between the formality of forms, checks and whatever else and having flexibility. I do not know whether that answers the Deputy's question.