I'll take the other two points around the Lisbon treaty and the contribution of stakeholders. Maybe Bevin might like to also comment on that.
I wouldn't envisage any changes from the introduction of the Lisbon treaty. I think all the member states are now committed, as Gerry has said, to the implementation of anti-poverty strategies, or social inclusion strategies, as they're called at the European level.
I referred to it in my introductory remarks, because for the first time it will be included in the treaties of the European Union. Up until now it has been an aspiration. It would still remain a responsibility of the member states, but there's a greater coordination of approaches and a sharing of experiences across the 27 member states as to how to tackle poverty.
We would have delegations coming from other member states to see what's happening in Ireland; we would be in touch with fellow member states about what they're doing, and we can learn from their approaches. It's very much a sharing approach within the European Union. It will probably give an impetus and will help a lot to push the whole agenda on poverty and social exclusion along.
In regard to stakeholders, one of the interesting things about the commitment in Ireland of the trade unions and the employers is that we're lucky to have only one trade union centre and one employers' organization; we have single-peak organizations at the social partner level that work with the government, not just through the national partnership process but in a wide range of governmental agencies and organizations, so the social partners have a major input into the whole aspect of the development and the implementation of economic and social planning in Ireland.
The other thing I was going to mention was in regard to something Mr. Martin said around the national agreement of the PPF. In 2006 and 2007 we had quite an interesting development in Ireland, in that a lot of the programs we had in place converged at the same time and had to be renewed around the same time. We had the national anti-poverty strategy; it was finished in 2007. The PPF was finished in 2006, and the new Towards 2016, a 10-year agreement, came into force last year. Then there was the national development plan that came on stream at the same time, and we also had to prepare the reports for the European Union. A lot of these things came together, and there was an opportunity to integrate and interlink a lot of the strategies into one coherent national strategy, which again helped to focus on the national direction we want to go in.