Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence

Recent Meetings of the Foreign Affairs Council and the UN Security Council: Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade

Photo of Joe O'ReillyJoe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity. Since this is one of our first hybrid meetings, on a personal level I wish to welcome to our team Ms Emma McCarron. She worked with me on the Council of Europe, highly satisfactorily so, and worked on the Irish team there with great effect and great impact. It is wonderful that we have somebody with that experience and ability on our team now.

I welcome the Minister and his officials to the meeting. The handling of the UN role is extraordinarily satisfactory. I will not repeat all the detail the Minister has given. He is doing an extremely good job, as is Ireland generally. He graciously recognised the role of our 50 young civil servants over there. That is all good, and I wish to recognise that. I am delighted with the Minister's passionate commitment to the Middle East, his continual visits there and his pursuing of matters in the region. That is of great importance to me, as it is important, as the Minister said, to every Irish person.

I will run through a few specific questions. I understand that Afghanistan, to which the Minister referred in his presentation, is going through extraordinary economic turmoil at the moment and is an almost dysfunctional economy at a certain level. That is my understanding. I will stand corrected if I am wrong. What opportunity might that present for the international community to insist on and enhance women's rights there? Since Afghanistan is no longer a big issue in the news as the news keeps changing, as we in this room all understand, I would like to hear what the Minister would say are the current issues in Afghanistan and how he sees the state of the country generally. I would like a comment on that.

I will not repeat the points the Minister made about the Middle East. It is great that it is a priority for him. I agree with him: I do not think the Irish people are antisemitic, nor does the Minister, I know. However, I certainly agree with him about the targeting of people online. Our Jewish community should not feel any sense of insecurity - on the contrary - yet we can be very honest with them. I suspect that many among the Jewish diaspora or Jewish people living here or elsewhere, outside of Israel, are quite embarrassed about a lot of the issues we discuss here. I agree with the Minister about the non-governmental organisations. That is terrible, and it is important we stay with them until, as he himself says, there is evidence to the contrary, and there clearly is not, so it is important we go on funding and working with the non-governmental bodies in the region. He referred in his presentation to the elections in Palestine and the hope to get elections there. He might comment a little more on what is happening there. The last thing I will ask him about the Middle East is this: does he detect within the current Israeli Government, because of its complex and disparate nature, a lack of willingness or a lack of priority when it comes to the peace process?

If so, can we change that? If not, when would he see hope there?

We are all interested in the Iranian nuclear deal. The Minister alluded to it. He is following it very closely. There is not a lot we can say, other than that we hope it works. The Minister might speak about his instincts around it at the moment.

I ask the Minister to comment on access for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia. It is depressing to hear him say that Ethiopia is at the point of civil war.

Again, we are involved in access in Syria. The Minister might comment on that.

I will finish with a couple of quick points. The Minister referenced China. I will not go into the individual case that Deputy Berry dealt with and that the Minister responded to. The media reports about the Uighur Muslim people in China are concerning to all of us here. I do not know what information the Department has on this topic. If the media reports are true, we are back in a dreadful situation. Future generations will talk about what we did not do about this.

Of course, I agree with the Minister and with everyone who referenced Belarus. As he said, there is a fifth round of sanctions. That is all to the good. I was watching the television coverage last night - all of us probably were - on the Polish border. It is distressing.

Lastly, as a Border person, I would like to say that I welcome the Minister’s clear statement on Brexit. The British Government, and indeed many politicians in the North of Ireland, are out of kilter with the business community there and with the ordinary people on the topic of Brexit. There is a divergence there. The ordinary people feel differently about this question, as does the business community and civil society. In fact, politicians are way behind the curve on this topic. Anybody who is rational in Northern Ireland wants a normal trading relationship and wants to have the advantage of the greatly increased North-South trade that we are delighted about. They want to be fit to trade east-west in a smooth fashion. I welcome what the Minister has said there. Certainly, it would be a nightmare scenario for the part of Ireland I come from if we were to go back to open hostilities, to a breakdown of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and to a breakdown of the protocol on Article 16.

I find the report encouraging in that Ireland is so proactive, and the Minister is too. However, the report is disturbing insofar as it sets out where we are at on a number of questions. I am interested in the Minister’s responses.

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