Mr. Enda O'Neill:

It would depend on which instruments we are talking about opting into or not opting into. If we were to opt into none of them, we would be in a very complicated situation in terms of the Dublin regulation, for example. If we are still bound by the Dublin regulation but no other country in Europe is, it would be very complicated to imagine how that might work in terms of identifying the member state responsible for determining that case. Similarly Eurodac is quite a large reform of that system. I believe new computer system databases will be involved in that, so there may be technical and practical issues around accessing existing systems if we are the only country still applying the old laws. From a legal perspective, as alluded to by Mr. Leonard, this is the third iteration of the common European asylum system. We opted into some instruments of the first one and some instruments of the second one. Therefore, if there is a third iteration and we have a pick and mix from different times, as the pacts are closely interlinked, it would probably result in legal complications in trying to interpret certain provisions at various times.