Ms Niamh Campbell:

The financial transactions tax is one of the elements proposed as a way of raising revenue for the EU budget. That proposal was made before we entered into the realm of enhanced co-operation for the financial transactions tax. As the Chairman has said, Ireland is not participating in that. It remains on the table for the EU budget but I think the discussion about how it would be implemented has not advanced in any way. We know that a number of member states who will be participating in the financial transactions tax are not in favour of it being used as an EU budget resource. Therefore, the general intelligence is that there are unlikely to be significant changes in the Union resource arrangements. That is as much as we know. In terms of where Ireland would fit in, our budget contributions will continue to be largely related to our GNI.