Thomas Byrne: “We remain a neutral country and this legislation will not change this, despite all of the shouting and fighting and…”

Neither does anybody here in Ireland," he said.

I'm absolutely confident we can achieve this by the end of the year because I think we need to, and the reason we need to is because we need to have the funds in place by the 1 January 2028.

It’s crucial because we're talking about member states saying they're paying too much, and one way to bridge that gap is to have [New] Own Resources.

I can't give any assurances to anybody at this time because we're in the throes of the negotiations.