Mr President, I also wish to thank and congratulate the rapporteur who has done a very good job. I have to say that I admire his patience and efficiency and particularly the way in which he takes everybody's view into account.

This whole budgetary procedure has changed gradually over the years because there was a time when the day we prepared the budget was a big day. Now we have reorganized the common agricultural policy and we have taken the day-to-day management more or less out of it. We have done something similar with European regional policy - taken into long-term programmes a large portion of the funds which we have.

I wish to say to Parliament that we now must ensure that we develop a new role of monitoring carefully the way these programmes, both in agriculture and Structural Funds, are put into effect to ensure that the money goes where it was supposed to go and is spent how we intended to be spent.

The budget of the Community is very small: it is only three times the size of the Irish budget, or about one-fifth of the British budget. It achieves a far bigger impact than its size would indicate, and to ensure that it does that to a greater extent, it is the job of this institution to monitor its spending extremely carefully.

Finally, regarding the International Fund for Ireland, I wish to thank the Committee on Budgets. We have written that in in such a way that there is some flexibility. I understand that the Council and Commission are looking at other means to finance or support the peace effort in Northern Ireland. When they come up with their proposals, we shall be looking very carefully to ensure that this is money that was not going to come to Ireland or Northern Ireland in any case, that it is not some kind of botched-up compromise of old money and that it is absolutely transparent and that whatever commitment the Member States make to add to that money is also honoured. That has not happened with INTERREG in the past and it has not happened with Structural Funds, but the budgetary authority is going to ensure through the Committee on Budgetary Control that it does happen in relation to this. I ask the Council and Commission to be very careful about what they prepare and ensure that it meets the requirements that we shall

lay down.