Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, has advocated the Commission presenting it again in a different form to address the issues where there was fundamental disagreement on the part of several countries because there was no hope of success.

On Deputy Rabbitte's point on the service directive, I worked last year, particularly with the French, to ensure that the directive as it was at that time did not secure agreement at the European Council. We sent it back for significant changes. It has been in Parliament since with 1,000 amendments. In my letter of 21 October I made clear our opposition to aspects of it. If people could contract people and forward them to a country, it would create horrendous difficulties and I am against that. I made it clear that we were prepared to change. It would probably involve changing some of our legislation but we would engage with that.

We promised that we would work to establish a serious housing initiative involving State lands and engage with the ICTU on the issue, not that they were all to be completed. We have completed 250,000 houses in that period but we wanted to help with affordability of houses in particular. That is working quite well because a large number of houses is entering that end of the market. Through the State lands we have honoured our commitments. I have spoken previously about fast-tracking the process. What was the other question Deputy Rabbitte asked?

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