Mr. John Murphy:

On the EU-US TTIP, it was another significant achievement to get a political mandate for those negotiations. As committee members are probably aware, trade negotiations are conducted by the Commission on behalf of the member states but it requires a political mandate and therefore the real negotiations to get the show on the road had to be done during our Presidency. We secured agreement and the negotiations are under way in three rounds. Significant progress has been made but the agenda is very big. It is potentially very important not just for the Irish economy or the EU economy but for the global economy because together the US and the European Union represent a large proportion of global trade and even with the growth of the BRIC countries will continue to do so in the future. Therefore, facilitating trade and removing regulatory barriers in particular will have the effect of setting the global standards across a range of sectors which could only be to our benefit. In any negotiations there are of course offensive and defensive positions to be taken. We are conscious of the aspects of Ireland’s interests that need to be protected as well as just looking at the opportunities.

The European semester process will become more important for Ireland as we go forward because as we come out of the troika programme we will now be subject to the full possibilities of recommendations that arise out of the semester process. We will talk about that in further detail. I could discuss any of those issues in more detail or we could take them in order.