Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy and other Members will appreciate that in the normal course of events, the Commission puts forward its position, on foot of which there is toing and froing at official level and fairly frequently at ministerial level, as in this instance, to address the outstanding issues. It is not helpful to blame the Commission, Departments or various directorates general at Commission level. The position is that Ireland is committed to delivering on the operational programme. It is consulting the Commission and we intend to bring the discussions to a constructive conclusion as soon as possible.

The meeting of which the Deputy spoke was less than a month ago and it would simply be impractical to expect the outstanding issues to have been dealt with since then.

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