Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On the first matter raised by Deputy Kenny, the Government hopes to get final approval on the draft of this legislation from the Attorney General, who is giving this matter his personal attention, and that we will be in a position to bring it forward during the next session.

With regard to the vote on the Lisbon treaty, I take the point made by the Deputy. As he knows, the Department of Foreign Affairs is undertaking work on this matter and the information will probably be collated and available in September. We need to apply our minds to what forum we can use to conduct dialogue on the implications of that and collectively assess the means by which we could articulate the issues. In the meantime, work will take place at official and political levels in Government. We will interact with colleagues and President Sarkozy will be here next week. We will also work with the Commission to see, based on our preliminary analysis, to what extent we can move matters forward. The Deputy is aware this is a difficult situation and one that will probably require further discussion.

See this speech in context