Joe O'Reilly (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the guests. It is good to have their input and the opportunity to talk to them. It is right that we embark on a review of our foreign affairs arrangements, our diplomacy, the aims of our foreign policy and where we deploy resources. Such a review is welcome and necessary. Circumstances have changed as a consequence of the extraordinarily deep recession, movement in Northern Ireland and changes within the European Union. This context informs why we would want to review policy. It is a worthy review and exercise.

Before we talk about the review, it is no harm to applaud ourselves on our outstanding EU Presidency. It was a great credit to us and we did well. Our chairmanship of the OSCE and our election to the UN Commission on Human Rights must be borne in mind. We have had three enormous successes. I had the privilege of leading the Irish delegation to the Council of Europe. Senator Terry Leyden, a member of the committee, is the vice chairman of that delegation. We are having a significant input, keeping Ireland at the forefront of the human rights agenda and concern for the rule of law and democracy. These are core values in this country. While they are important in themselves, they are also important to the Irish brand and the way Ireland is perceived, which have implications for trade and commerce.

With regard to promoting business, from my limited experience and intuition, more than anything else, I believe Ms Cross’s final remark was very important. She was correct in saying there is no substitute for personal intervention and the personal touch. No submission of documents and no use of IT or social media could substitute for interpersonal contact by people on the ground and the development and sustaining of relationships. We need to bear that in mind in any analysis or deployment of resources.
When the Minister set out the terms of reference of the review, he said we would review the contribution of foreign policy to the economic development of the country. I ask the panel to comment on this, particularly Dr. Ivory as the matter is relevant to his work. It is relevant to all the delegates. I would like to see a mission statement stipulating the job of our foreign or diplomatic policy is to maximise business and trade and the number of jobs. However, this should be achieved in a regionally fair fashion. Thankfully, we have had great success in recent years in attracting inward investment. There has been tremendous internal job creation by the private sector, which I welcome very much. However, as a representative of the regions it would be remiss of me not to point out that constituencies such as mine, Cavan-Monaghan, are not sharing in this. While inward investors cannot be taken by the ears to a certain part of Ireland – they have freedom to move capital and free choice and I acknowledge what attracts them to certain locations – it would be legitimate to expect, as part of the set of objectives in the mission statement, that regional balance would be fought for. There is too much acquiescence to the thinking that all development must be along the east coast. I welcome development there but there should be regional balance.