Most of us are, although I do not know about the Deputy's friends sitting to his right.
The Government made an application to EUROSTAT, as was announced at the time. Negotiations have been ongoing between the Central Statistics Office, the Department of Finance and EUROSTAT in the intervening period. This week we received a letter from EUROSTAT which was negative in response and in tone. We replied to EUROSTAT yesterday and, as I said in an interview this morning, I regard this as part of the ongoing negotiations on this matter.
It remains the objective of this Government to secure regionalisation for the country. While this matter was debated at length some time ago, the Minister and Secretaries Group, which meets regularly, asked the Department of Finance to prepare a document on the possibility of regionalisation. That work was done between March and June. That document was then submitted to the Ministers and secretaries group and, with the agreement of the group, it was included in the memorandum for Government which decided, after much deliberation, that an appli cation would be made to Europe for sub-regionalisation of the country. The reasons given at the time are as valid now as they were then and the situation has not changed. We intend to pursue this matter with the utmost intensity in the coming weeks.