Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The option that Ireland can and will take is an ambitious option. I do not know where the Deputy is coming from when he said that we did not achieve our goals. We did achieve our goals in the negotiations. Ireland now has the capacity to choose the level of co-funding we want and other countries that want to choose lesser co-funding, for whatever reason, if they are in bailouts or whatever, that is for them to decide. I would have thought the Deputy would have welcomed member states making their own decisions on these matters rather than being dictated to by the European Union in a very stringent way in terms of co-funding rates under rural development programmes.

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