Robert O'Donoghue (Dublin Fingal West, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State. Last week at COSAC, there was a surprising amount of general agreement on many issues. When we discussed enlargement, many states were concerned that expansion without the reform of institutions and how they function would be problematic, particularly in terms of use of the unanimity rule, given the conduct by Hungary and our efforts to cajole and control it with Article 9 and threaten to suspect its voting rights. Given that we champion merit-based enlargement of the system and that creating a single market is good for us, does the Minister of State see enlargement as viable without changing how the institutions work? Could he make a statement on our position on treaty change to facilitate enlargement?

As part of Ireland's EU Presidency, we will chair the Council of Ministers for cultural, audiovisual and media. One of the key pieces of work for this Council will be the revision of the audiovisual media services directive. One of the provisions of the directive is the European works content levy, which this Government recently decided not to introduce. Does the Minister of State have any concerns about Ireland's position as chair, given that we will be in a minority of EU countries that have not introduced a levy as we discuss possible reforms to it?

Finally with the multi-annual financial framework, MFF, member states that are geographically closer to Russia are understandably pushing harder for increased military spending, while a majority of COSAC seemed to want to retain current levels of spending on CAP and regional funding. As part of our Presidency, will we bring forward potential new sources of revenue to facilitate the wishes of the member states, particularly those closer to Russia, while maintaining CAP and regional spending or does the Minister of State envisage having to cut current schemes to facilitate everybody?