Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not underestimate the scale of this challenge at all because of the unanimity requirement. As the Deputy alluded to, the critique of some member states to the Commission's proposals of June 2018 has been that the published proposals for financial cuts do not go far enough. That is a particularly challenging starting point. Those countries, namely, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Austria, take a polar opposite view to us. We have argued that in many ways, the CAP is a template that could be usefully emulated in other areas where the EU faces other big challenges such as in the areas of migration and security. Those challenges are not a reason to raid the CAP budget, and the Taoiseach has been quite strong on this in the context of his address to the European Parliament in early 2018, when he clearly stated our willingness to pay additional money into the European Union, but on the basis that it supports programmes that are important to us. This is a really difficult challenge on the basis that unanimity is required. We remain steadfast in our view that the budget should be protected. There is a judgment call to be made here and I do not detect any momentum for increasing the budget. If we can get to a situation where we get a protected budget, that would be as good as it would get.

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