Mr. John Murphy:

Deputy Lawlor was complaining that the report was EU-centric and did not focus sufficiently on what we were doing to advance Irish policies in an EU context. The report does what it says on the tin. It is specifically about developments at EU level. If a member state goes into a Presidency with a perspective that it is going to use it as six months to pursue policies of that member state, then that is a very risky approach to take. It is quite likely to result in it not being a very effective Presidency. We have sought to take the agenda as it has evolved up to our Presidency, to identify those parts of it that are most critical from an EU and from an Irish point of view, and to progress those, but we also do the day job, which is the regular run-of-the-mill EU work that a Presidency must manage efficiently. If that is not done, we will not get success in areas of higher priority.