Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I am conscious in answering the Deputy's questions of the time remaining for our meeting. On services, wherever there is potential for economic benefit, it always should be explored. In fairness to the European Union, it has issued a lot of very good policies on services over the years. Those policies are there for people to follow.

On the movement of people within the EU, I have given my views on that. Free movement of people has been one of the cornerstones of the whole European project. It is one of the issues that has worked well for us. People will always ask whether the next enlargement will create a problem. People want to protect what they have.

On some of the issues down the road and where things will go, the conclusions from the EU two years ago noted that enlargement will not only depend on the merit of candidate countries - applicants must have merit to join - but also on the Union's capacity to absorb new members. This goes back to what Deputy Howlin was saying. We need to look back 20 or 30 years to what Mr. Delors was talking about and finally decide what are the lines of Europe. We cannot go on stretching and stretching those lines. Somewhere, there is an absorption capacity for the European Union. Somebody has to decide how far it can go. That argument was meant to have been decided 20 years ago when the new neighbourhood policy was set. We were meant to decide which countries would be in the Union and the new neighbourhood countries with which we would have a relationship.

That did not work. I do not know where that got buried in the sand somewhere along the way. Maybe after this enlargement, we have to go back and look at that because I do not believe it can just go on and on. It can come to a ridiculous position. We had a debate on whether Turkey would be a member 20 years ago. That was a well-argued one.

The other issue is that the key question, as I understand it, that revolves around identifying priority issues, is whether institutional reform or treaty change is necessary. In our case, with the 1987 Supreme Court judgment, we can be nearly sure that it will end up in a treaty change and a constitutional referendum unless somebody challenges the 1987 decision, which I probably should have done because it was far too narrow. Going back to the last question, if I were around today, I would do it because we are obliged to have a referendum for any little change at all, which is not the greatest thing in the world. If there is something fundamental, that is different. As to the degree of assessing the financial costs of enlargement and ensuring that citizens in member states and candidate countries do not feel shut out of the process, they are the issues that have been identified by the European Union. I agree with those issues.

On the Deputy's last question, working together is always the best way to do it. If we want to make progress in anything, even if we disagree, it is about sitting around a table thrashing things out, trying to draw up policy positions and trying to work together. That is always the way you find solutions. They may not be perfect solutions, but working together is the right thing to do.