Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I will talk to individuals. As usual, however, there is a huge turnover of finance Ministers. At the upcoming meeting, there will be many new finance Ministers I need to greet and introduce myself to so as to establish some kind of relationship. One of the current difficulties, which I mentioned before, is that there are 18 Eurogroup countries. I was a participant for three years last March and I am the second most senior Minister there now.

I am on my seventh Greek finance Minister. I am not making a joke. I am just saying it is very hard to build working relationships when there is such a turnover of Ministers. The other factor is that, because the political side keeps changing, the Commission gets stronger. The Commission is made up of the permanent people there and they are the people with the experience and the continuing flow of information. It is one of the concerns I have about the European bureaucracy. It is the fault of the member states for not having greater longevity for the terms of office of their individual Ministers. There seems to be a practice in Europe to move people very quickly from Governments. It is not because they are fired; they have just moved on to another Ministry. Two years would be considered quite a significant period in an individual Ministry. Then it moves on.