Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I do not think it is intentionally undermining the agreement, but it has clearly not been helpful during the course of this calendar year.

Introducing the legislation was something that proved unhelpful and greatly annoyed the Irish Government, and rightly so. The fact of the matter is that, since last October, the EU has been trying its utmost to propose comprehensive positions - they may not have been solutions, but at least they were positions - to the UK Government. That was a year ago. There were a few brief talks in February, but they did not come to anything. It has only been recently that we have seen some progress with the new ministers involved. I was going to say the "British Prime Minister", but I do not know who the British Prime Minister is. It changed on the way in. Whoever the British Prime Minister is, I hope that he or she will take a proactive position. What the British Prime Minister of yesterday said was not helpful. Whoever is there tomorrow might say something different. Yesterday, the British Prime Minister said that, even if there were negotiations, what was in the legislation would be the bottom line. I never tried to negotiate where I had declared what the bottom line was before going into the negotiations. That is clearly not going to solve anything.

That said, at least the British Government at official level, and some of the outgoing politicians before Mr. Steve Baker and Mr. Chris Heaton-Harris came to office, put together a comprehensive paper on what the EU was offering, what their position was, where the compromises might lie and where they would not compromise at all. At least that work has been done. The negotiations that started last week with Mr. James Cleverly and his people should be going somewhere. Let us be honest, though, the British Government's focus on anything over the past ten days has probably been poor. I hope to see developments in the coming weeks, but all that we have seen over the past week is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland saying that he would call an election next week.