Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

To give an example, the late payments directive comes into operation next month and states public bodies should pay within 30 days but no later than 60 days. I believe the Irish are the worst in Europe in this regard so this will mean 60 days. Will Ms Prendergast comment on this? Where does it come from? How do we manage to do something about it?

With regard to the cost of EU legislation on small and medium enterprises in particular, as somebody who has been in business I would love to see more research done on the cost of each piece of legislation before it is implemented. Will Ms Prendergast comment on whether she believes an audit to find the cost of European Union legislation for businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, would be a good idea? I believe it is a big problem.

Recently Angela Merkel stated the EU Commission will eventually become a government, the Council of member states will become an upper chamber and the European Parliament will be more powerful, but fixing the eurozone problem is more urgent for now. She is clearly a federalist and this is what she wants to see. She states this is our objective and what we plan to do, but we will not do it just yet because we have other things to do at present. What are Ms Prendergast's view on this? How does she think the European Parliament would feel about it? Are we looking for more power to go to Europe? Are we looking for a united states of Europe in the years ahead? How does Ms Prendergast feel about this and how does she believe others feel about it?

On Monday the European Commission stated the horsemeat scandal is a labelling problem and does not represent a health issue. I do not agree. There seems to be a big problem with the way Europe labels products. In 2013, directives will be introduced in this regard which will decide on crucial rules on the labelling of food products. I would not like to see best before dates being encouraged. In my business we used to sell potatoes and the potato supplier stated if one wanted new potatoes to taste well one should eat them within three days of being picked. This meant a best before date of three days for these potatoes. Many people do not understand that best before has to do with taste and they throw away products. We have a huge food wastage problem-----