Mr. John Murphy:

On the transposition of directives, the general principle is the division that deals with the issue is responsible for transposing the directive. If the directive relates to state aid, as an example, one of the principal officers in the competitiveness and jobs division who deals with state aid would be the file officer.

The time for the regulatory impact assessment is before it becomes a directive.

We would always be anxious to ensure that this is when the work is done by the Commission because once it is transposed and there is a requirement to legislate, one does not really have that much room for manoeuvre. We cannot sort of say the directive says X but we will go off and do something completely different.