Neale Richmond (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in the Chairman's welcome to the Minister of State. I am delighted to see her taking up her role and I wish her best wishes in the coming months and years of her service. I do not doubt that she will be a success and the Government will flourish with her in this vital role. I thank her for her kind words about the Seanad committee's report, which was launched yesterday. Alongside Seanad colleagues, I look forward to engaging in a debate on the report with her next week. I will not discuss Brexit today. I am sure that other committee colleagues might have a word or two to say about it, but I will have 80 billion words to say to her about it next week and many other times socially.

I wish to touch on two matters, both of which the Minister of State has mentioned, and I am grateful to her for doing so. The first matter is the White Paper on the Future of Europe. I will not mention Brexit because it has happened, is being negotiated and is playing out. Our Government has played an excellent role in putting Ireland in the best position in that regard, which is to be commended, but we have moved on and must now consider the future of Europe and the European Commission's suggestions, some of which are welcome. Like anything when it comes to dealing with European affairs, however, I fear that some of those suggestions could be taken for granted, jeopardised or misrepresented by ill-informed or nefarious elements in civic society. We need to be careful in this regard. When we approach the idea of the future of Europe, we should set out exactly how Ireland sees its role in that future.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister of State or other members of the committee that I wholly believe that Ireland's future has to be at the heart of Europe. She remarked on this matter at the start of her address, which was welcome, but it is not something that can just be written down or shown. We need to become living and breathing examples of what it means to embrace the European ideal. To date, we have only done that at a half pace. We have kept ourselves semi-detached and connected to the UK instead of looking to the rest of Europe and the European project. This is our future - the UK is our past. We will maintain as strong a relationship as possible, but the UK has made a decision for us. Ireland must now make the decision that not only will we be at the heart of Europe, but we will defend it and say why this is right. I will not go into too much detail because the Minister of State has a great deal of work ahead of her. It is probably the busiest junior Ministry and should be a full Ministry, given that the Minister of State will have the workload of a full Minister, so I wish her well. Every meeting should be underlined by us voicing our commitment to Europe and our reasons and by taking on those who put out the idiotic suggestion that we would somehow be better off out of Europe. That is the challenge that I lay down to the Minister of State and I wish her every bit of luck.