I propose to take Questions Nos. 28 and 29 together.
The Commission's detailed proposals for the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy were published on 18 March 1998. A special meeting of the Council of Ministers was convened on 31 March 1998 to enable Ministers to put forward their initial responses to the proposals. At that meeting, I informed the Commissioner and my colleagues in the Council of the economic significance of the Irish interests that would be affected by the proposals and told them that the proposals were seriously damaging to Irish agriculture and the Irish economy and that, consequently, Ireland rejected them in their present form.
A preliminary technical examination of the proposals has been carried out in Council working groups and in the Special Committee on Agriculture over the past two months, where Ireland's concerns were set out. The proposals were again discussed at a meeting of the Council of Ministers on 25-26 May, when a progress report was prepared for the European Council in Cardiff on 15-16 June. That report included, at my request, an acknowledgement that the dependence of particular member states on specific sectors would be taken into account and a recognition by the Council of the need to avoid renationalisation of the CAP and distortion of competition while simplifying it and further decentralising its implementation.