Dr. Eoin Ryan:

We are engaging as part of the Council working party at the moment. Although it is us and the Department of agriculture who attend that, we do co-ordinate closely with the Department of Rural and Community Development before we go to the meetings and when things come up because it is part of the challenge.

We are not the only member state where things may be split between a couple of sections. We are in that iterative process. We provide our comments on the technical points. That is going on at the Council working party now. Of course, the European Parliament will then have its say after the Council completes its working party discussions. It will then go to Coreper and a decision will be made then. Generally, though, most of the discussions on this issue are technical in nature. I think it would be fair to say there is general support for this proposal among most member states and the discussions tend to be on the specific technical minutiae. The Senator will see herself that it is quite a technical regulation.