Mr. Janusz Wojciechowski:

I thank the Deputy very much for his question. Yes, he is correct that there is too much bureaucracy, but we did not use that formula. Before my appointment to the European Court of Auditors, I was, as Mr. Cardiff said, a Member of the European Parliament. We discussed the issue of simplification at length, but, ultimately we did not reach it. We have a more bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy. We counted the number of pages involved in the 118 rural development programmes and for the Commission there were approximately 100,000. That involves a lot of bureaucratic work, but it is not useful for the purpose of monitoring expenditure. In the audit we only covered the programming process, not individual programmes, but there was an audit of the young farmers' scheme, the results of which were very interesting. We observed that the problems of young farmers were a consequence of a policy that had not been sufficiently oriented towards results. Money is being spent, but nobody knows what is expected or what should be achieved with it.

We are preparing a briefing paper on Commissioner Hogan's proposals. Perhaps Mr. Welch might say more about it. At the end of March we expect to present our position paper based on our reports and the conclusions and recommendations made in previous reports. The document is being prepared by us.

Yesterday I presented the report on the rural development programme to the agriculture committee of the European Parliament and there was much interest in it. Everybody knows that simplification of the policy is necessary. Perhaps the Irish RDP might be a good example. One could ask that if it was possible to prepare a shorter RDP in Ireland, why was it not possible to do so in Italy, Greece or other member states? Perhaps there might be good practice in Ireland from which we can learn.