Ms Jacqui McCrum:

I want to go back to Deputy Carthy's question on the working time directive. I share his frustration. We answer parliamentary questions on this all of the time and I acknowledge that it is the same answer all the time. I assure Deputy Carthy that there is constructive dialogue. The removal of this blanket exemption is a very complex matter. While many militaries throughout Europe have signed up to this, and I believe seven have done so including Sweden, Belgium, Greece, Austria, Romania, Italy and Hungary, they have their derogations and they have their exemptions. Not all of them have transposed the directive. We are not too far behind. We need to come to a combined policy decision on this. I hope we are not too far off this. The Tánaiste is certainly pushing us to finalise these conclusions and it will flow from there. On the legislation front there is no timetable for it but we have upped the number of people working in the legislative process so that we can bring this and other parts of the legislation through in a very timely manner in the new year.