Ms Niamh Campbell:

We are here to make a presentation on the Commission proposal COM (2012) 388, for the regulation and laying down the multi-annual financial framework, MFF for the EU budget 2014-2020. The committee will be aware that next week the European Council will discuss the multi-annual financial framework, MFF. Since the proposal was tabled, events have moved on. In order to be helpful to the committee, we had agreed with the Chairman, to make a broad presentation on the MFF, rather than going through the detail, line by line of the regulation. We are happy to answer any questions on the regulation. There have been many developments since then and we thought it would be useful to set out the overall context.

At national level this work is carried out jointly by the Departments of Finance and the Taoiseach. I will speak for the first five minutes and then my colleague, Mr. Kyle O'Sullivan, will speak for the second five minutes. I will speak on the actual Commission proposal and the state of play in the current negotiations and Mr. O'Sullivan will talk about Ireland's position, the position of the other member states and the process for securing final agreement.

I have a power point presentation, but I notice that the slides are difficult to read and I do not think members will be able to read them.