asked the Taoiseach if he now feels it necessary to make extensive corrections to the assessment he gave to Dáil Éireann of the European Council at Stuttgart having regard to the Commission's proposals on the super levy which have been published since then.

I stand fully over what I said in this House on 22 June last when I indicated where we had been successful in getting agreement to certain specific matters to be taken into account in the review of the CAP. This has, for example, placed the Government in a much more favourable position to defend, on Community principles, the interests of this country and to express their fundamental opposition to the whole idea of a "super levy" applied to Irish milk supplies.

Is the Taoiseach aware that he claimed in the Dáil in his statement on 22 June that the outcome of the Stuttgart Summit was strikingly positive and that the Minister and he, with gratifying support from colleagues, were successful in preventing damage to Irish interests in the Common Agricultural Policy? Would he accept that he misjudged totally the situation and that Deputy Haughey was right when he said it was necessary only to read the list of questions which were to be examined under the heading of the CAP to realise that they constitute a major onslaught on the CAP? Did the Taoiseach not put his name to conclusions which invited the EEC Commission to bring forward revised super levy proposals?

I did not put my name to anything which invited the Commission to bring forward revised or unrevised super levy proposals. I am not sure where the Deputy got that information. At the Stuttgart meeting a number of proposals were made and prior to it a number of proposals had been made with regard to the criteria to be applied in reviewing the CAP. It was our concern to ensure that these criteria should be favourable to us in a positive sense and that we would avoid as far as possible unfavourable criteria. We had significant success in that respect, which has placed us in a much more favourable position in the negotiations now taking place, which are and were bound to be very difficult negotiations, but the criteria as finally agreed in Stuttgart have been extremely helpful to us in our viewing of our position by comparison with what they would have been had they not been adjusted before and at the Stuttgart meeting.

Is the Taoiseach aware that he positively invited the super levy proposals? He stressed explicitly on 22 June — I quote from his statement to this House as reported in the Official Report, column 2691, Volume 343:

—the acceptability of any proposals that would be directed towards freezing existing production levels in member states where these are well below the Community average. . . .

Far from inviting such proposals, I was putting down a marker that any such proposals would be unacceptable to the Irish Government, as was my duty at that time and remains my duty as Taoiseach now in the present negotiations.

6.