Seán Haughey (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join other speakers in congratulating the Minister of State on all the work being done on the Citizens' Dialogue on the Future of Europe and generally on the Brexit negotiations. The President of the European Council, Mr. Donald Tusk, made an important speech today in Luxembourg outlining the EU draft guidelines for negotiations on post-Brexit ties. Is the Minister of State in a position to update us on that and on Ireland's view of the EU's view as outlined by Mr. Tusk? There is cause for concern generally. Mr. Tusk spoke about negative economic consequences in respect of trade and also made reference to the fact that if the UK leaves the customs union and the Single Market, there will be friction in the context of trade. It is becoming clear that Ireland will have to rely on the backstop option which has been put forward if we are to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's views in that regard.

I have a question on PESCO but I appreciate that the Minister of State may not be in a position to answer it now. I understand that the Minister of State at the Department of Defence was in Brussels yesterday where he talked about signing up to two of the projects on the menu, as it were, in respect of PESCO. Does the Minister of State have any further information on that? If not, perhaps she would be able to forward an update on it to us. This is something about which the Dáil should be kept informed.

We had the Irish MEPs in here recently and they are very concerned about the multi-annual financial framework and the deficit in the EU budget post 2020, with the UK leaving the EU. Would it be fair to say that our position on the budget is that we are in favour of retaining CAP and the Cohesion funding, are against a common consolidated corporate tax base and are willing to increase our contribution to the Union? Having listened to the Taoiseach, I believe that is a fair summary of our position but perhaps the Minister of State could confirm that.

In terms of institutional issues, the Irish MEPs, for obvious reasons, were very interested in the position of MEPs post-Brexit and, in particular, in the elections for the European Parliament in 2019. I understand that there is a proposal to redistribute 27 of the 73 European Parliament seats left over following the departure of the UK and that Ireland may get two of those seats. I would welcome any update on that issue from the Minister of State. I note that a suggestion has been made regarding transnational lists for European Parliament elections. I think that has been ruled out in respect of the elections in 2019 but that is something about which we should be concerned. Transnational lists would remove MEPs from the people and would mean that MEPs would become more elitist. That is an issue of which we should be very conscious.