Mr. Barry Andrews:

It is great to see Senator Martin. I congratulate him on his election to the Seanad. It is good to see him and it is a long time since we caught up.

The French-Irish relationship is critical for us. When I was at the Institute of International and European Affairs, we did some work on studying that and we had an exchange between experts in the institute and French bodies at diplomatic levels. The Senator mentioned the massive increase in direct ferry traffic between Ireland and France and compared with January 2020, the figures are approximately six times greater for the connections, which is important. The energy connection, the Celtic interconnector, is a critical piece of infrastructure.

We are in the same group as French President Macron's people so it is dominated by our French colleagues. Ms Nathalie Loiseau, a former European affairs Minister for France, is in our group and she is our interlocutor on the Brexit file. We develop good connections with France all the time. It is often said the European Union is a German train with a French engine and, historically, a British brake. The British brake is gone but the Franco-German project will require our greatest attention. It is why we need to up our game in all these spaces. The Hanseatic idea has been developed whereby we would have loose alliances with Nordic and Baltic countries, or the Netherlands and like-minded states across the European Union. These are temporary alliances and from time to time we allow the French to speak, particularly on the agriculture and fisheries files. I hope they will do this for the climate files, as the French are very progressive on the Paris climate accords and ensuring it is stitched into trade agreements and enforceable. We should really push our values across the globe. The idea of strategic autonomy has been around for years. We consume a large amount of UK media and almost no French or German media, which is a major problem. I do not know how we can solve it. It is an English-speaking issue but those links are well worth cultivating.