One year to ratify Lisbon and commissioner can stay

IRELAND will get to keep its commissioner and be given 12 months to try to ratify the Lisbon treaty, commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has indicated.

He said that giving every European Union country a commissioner should not be a problem if that was what Ireland needs to approve the Lisbon treaty.

But he made it clear that if Lisbon was not ratified then the rules of the Nice treaty would apply and it says the commission will be reduced by up to a third.