Mr. Ciarán Cuffe:

I will be very brief. Communicating Europe is a challenge. One thing that has been extraordinarily successful has, weirdly enough, been Brexit. We all like heroes and villains and Michel Barnier has come across very strongly as a hero in defending both Irish and European interests in his discussions with the United Kingdom. In a curious way as we come to the end game in the Brexit debacle, Irish people will feel much more strongly allied to Europe.

Moving around to the issues of health raised by Deputy Ó Murchú, we need co-ordination on health testing in Europe. We are on the back foot because there is not that much European competency on health. The Commission and the European Parliament know this and I hope there will be better co-ordination, particularly on travel, between the member states. This is not just with the traffic light system but with co-ordination on testing as well. The conference on the future of Europe will be of enormous importance. It may well have to wait until we can get hundreds of people into the same room but it is of great importance in the thinking about what the future is.

For Europe, particularly coming from a Brussels-based perspective, there is a great debate about central and south-eastern Europe and the significant amount of work that has to be done there, not only to build infrastructure but to defend democracy as well. It is important that Ireland is part of that. I will leave it at that and I thank the committee.