Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

First, the Deputy should not believe everything he reads in the media. Second, when one makes a change to the criteria of any scheme, one must make an application to get approval for those changes because the funding comes through the European Commission. My Department is going through that process at present, which is perfectly normal. While letters are going back and forth to clarify questions and so on, it would not be true to state anyone has a huge problem with this proposal. From the correspondence I have seen to date, this is the kind of correspondence that happens when one makes changes to criteria within a scheme, whereby one makes a proposal, the Commission reverts with questions and one responds by answering those questions. This is the process through which the Department is going at present and there is nothing extraordinary about it.

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