The Minister referred to our position in relation to EU competition law. In reply to a parliamentary question in the Dáil on 21 November last, the Minister said his Department had proceeded on the basis of the findings of the relevant EU directorate that risk equalisation does not give rise to state aid concerns. However, the Irish Medical News, in its issue of 17 February this year, quoted from the Minister's letter to the EU, which was released under the Freedom of Information Act, in which he said that the competition directorate had advised Department officials at a meeting in Brussels in March 1999 that it did not have particular state aid concerns about risk equalisation. On the basis of that reading, everything seems fine.