Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator. The references to fraud arise from the agenda we had earlier in the week. There has been huge VAT fraud across the EU. We were scheduled to discuss an initiative on its elimination on Tuesday but it has been deferred, probably until the June meeting.

The European authorities are focusing on tax evasion because of the savings directive I mentioned and countries like Lichtenstein, Switzerland and so on. As a result of their rules on confidentiality and secrecy, they prefer to pay a withholding tax rather than reveal information about deposits from non-nationals and their banking systems. They are now moving towards transparency. Those holding out were, as I said, were Austria and Luxembourg. I spoke to both Ministers during the week, and they have now agreed to move and change the mandate. The mandate is for the Union to negotiate transparency rules with the five non-EU states which are used for tax management purposes. We are making significant progress on that.

On the EU budget, there are two budgets, one which stretches to 2020, which the Taoiseach discussed with the Tánaiste on Monday in Brussels, and a supplementary budget to pay the bills for 2013. The Parliament has tied the two together. What is up for discussion on Tuesday is the budget for 2013. The agreement between ourselves and the Commission is to aim for a figure of €11.2 billion. It is like a Supplementary Estimate. Some other countries - the creditor countries - think the amount is too high.

We want to establish the principle in order that we can engage with the Parliament on the wider issue as well as the supplementary budget. We want them to agree the principle of splitting the €11.2 billion and suggested a figure they could agree to, for example, €7 billion, and revisit it later in the year and agree the remaining figure. We think by splitting it that way, they will have agreed to the principle of a supplementary budget and the drawdown of a significant amount of it. Otherwise, there will be a hangover that will run into 2014 and there will be increasing difficulties. The Parliament is willing to engage again with a full discussion, not only on this but on the full multi-annual financial framework.