Ms Mary Lawlor:

It is clear that there is not any one person pushing this from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. There is a delay in Ireland, as Ms Tunney outlined, in developing a position on the file. I was in Brussels a couple of weeks ago where I met representatives of ten of the EU member states, many of which have already taken a position at headquarter level. We would like to see Ireland finalise its position to ensure its voice is clearly heard at the table. Otherwise, we will be left behind. We were told that there would be a public consultation but there is no sign of it. We need to home in on who is going to take responsibility properly within the Department in pushing this forward. At the moment, it is kind of just there.