Mr. Lee Reynolds:

The considered view of the physics community we have engaged with is that associate membership now is appropriate. As I said earlier, CERN wants a country to maximise its membership and, therefore, it is better to go in like that, maximise it and then develop it. One of the issues that has developed in discussion with Senators, who have taken a number of motions forward, is that, in addition to membership, we develop a CERN strategy. That will build on membership and open the opportunity to go further later. A number of eastern European countries went in at associate membership, quickly fulfilled it and saw the benefits of going to full. The Irish physics community is of the view that associate membership right now is the appropriate level that it can maximise the benefits from and build for the future.