Boost for Ireland in fight to keep €1.6bn fund

Ireland won a small victory in its fight to retain as much as possible of it’s €1.6 billion a year from the EU’s common agriculture fund as negotiations on the Union’s seven-year €1 trillion budget got underway.

A number of countries including Britain, Netherlands and Sweden that contribute more to the EU’s budget than they receive, were still sticking to red lines, insisting the amount of money to run common EU policies be cut well below the sums spent over the past few years.

The 27 leaders were sent home last night with a new set of proposals that they and their experts will consider overnight before meeting today at noon where they are expected, in the words of Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, to “get down and dirty”.