Mr. Tony Murphy:

I apologise. I was not sure if I would answer or wait for more questions. I thank the Deputy for his questions. As he knows, I am constantly trying to encourage and get Irish applicants and successful applicants into the EU institutions. We promote it wherever we can. I would definitely welcome the Department of Foreign Affairs jobs strategy. The strategy is in place and now it is about implementing that strategy to get real results. I fully agree with him. In terms of the Commission especially, we need people's bums on seats there because we really need people who are in there who are helping to shape policy and bring perspective to the table.

The European Court of Auditors is a small player in this. It is one of the smaller institutions but, nonetheless, we have been quite successful in attracting trainees proportionate to the other big member states. This year we successfully got three seconded national experts from the Irish Civil Service. There were 12 posts and we got three of them, so we were quite happy with that. Unfortunately, in the end, the third one got an offer to work in the Deputy's favourite field in the embassy in London, working on Brexit and agriculture, which I am sure is a very interesting job. Unfortunately, that meant we lost one. However, we still have a possibility to fill that if we can find another official who would be willing to come.

Another big influx out in the past few months has been in terms of Irish speakers. The derogation on Irish ended in January. For instance, in the court we have three new translators and another on the way; there will be a full team of four Irish translators in the courts. I am very happy to see that happen. Speaking of Irish, language skills is one of the big challenges.

We need to encourage more language learning. Now, it is almost the case that three languages are needed to get through the competitive process. Irish counts as an official language now, and there is English, generally, so usually one more is needed at a good level. The strategy is a start but it is very focused on the public service. We also need people to come from the private sector, if we can attract them. There is probably a lack of awareness. We need to promote the possibilities more in the universities and so on because many people do not know anything about them, which is problematic.

The increase in expenditure is down to one simple reason. Cohesion expenditure is increasing proportionately. It was slow to start off and now it is catching up. Cohesion expenditure by its nature is inherently risky because it is big projects involving state aid and procurement.

The Deputy asked about the Brexit bill. It is quite mathematical. It is €47.5 billion, most of which comes from something that we did not mention in the presentation. The EU has what is called the reste à liquider, appropriations which have been made and are yet to be paid. There was €303 billion of that at the end of 2020. I often found it strange that it was called the Brexit settlement because these were obligations, commitments that were made for projects in all the member states. The UK had a 12.36% share of this. The bulk of the €47.5 billion comes from that mathematical calculation, basically €36 billion. They have discounted it by €1 billion because based on past experience, there is a certain amount of commitments which do not materialise and are cancelled. The vast bulk of the rest of the money is its share of pension obligations for officials. These were obligations that were due at a point in time, December 2020, which were calculated based on their GNI contribution rate. There is a very complicated payment schedule. The payments for 2021 have happened without any issue. If the UK would like to pay it all off in one go the possibility is there but otherwise the payments are scheduled over quite some years.

We had discussions yesterday about the Brexit adjustment reserve, BAR, and where Ireland is. We would hope to utilise fully the available funding through eligible projects. I would imagine it should not be too much of a problem. We are probably the most impacted. There is probably some uncertainty because there are still outstanding issues, the impact of which has not yet fully materialised. They need to be addressed if and when they happen. On the other hand, an issue we raised in our opinion on the BAR was that if we are looking at big infrastructural projects, they can take some time. They will not be finished in a year or two, they can take quite an extensive period. If we discuss developments in Rosslare, for instance, these things will not happen in six months. Someone asked last time how we will audit this. It is one of our issues with how the funding is set. There are three prepayments, as we said and the claim is not made until 2023. We will not see anything until September 2023. I presume the Commission is in constant contact and discussions with the member states on how they are progressing and that there is some toing and froing on the eligibility of projects. I would be hopeful that we will utilise it to the full.