Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is my intention. I can say in good faith to the Deputy that nothing has changed since the last time we had this engagement in the House that would make me believe there would be any issue with November-December. In other words, what I know now, I knew the last time we had this conversation here. We are on course to get to procurement by the end of the year, November-December, as I indicated some months ago.

I recently looked at some state-aid notifications and they may be of some interest to the Deputy. For example, a Danish state-aid application in June 2012 took five months to approve. An Italian one in June 2012 took six months. A British one in the same month took ten months.

A French one in July 2010 took 15 months. Another Danish one in February 2010 took five months. A Polish one in July 2011 took four months and a German one in July 2011 also took four months. My hope is that the Irish application will be processed within a few months. One never knows when submitting an application to the Commission exactly when one is likely to get a response. If the work is done in advance, including the prenotification process by way of attendance at the early meetings to pre-notify of what can be expected, which is what we propose to do over the next couple of months, it makes it much easier to get the final application through quickly.

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