Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

EU enlargement is something of which we are very supportive as a Government. I am very proud of the fact that the most recent big enlargement into central Europe happened under the Irish Presidency. It was a Fianna Fáil Government at the time led by Bertie Ahern. The next significant enlargement should be into the western Balkans. We support the candidatures of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Many countries in the western Balkans have been waiting for a very long time. As long as they meet the criteria, I believe we should admit them. The risk in letting them wait too long is that people lose faith in the European path and other actors, including malign state actors, develop a presence in these countries. Parliament to parliament contacts are very important and I encourage them to continue. Contact is also important at civil society level.

I am not sure whether security and defence are on the agenda for the European Council next week. We do not have all of the papers yet. The approach we have taken as a Government is that we signed up to PESCO. We are a founder member of PESCO. We opt into programmes on a case-by-case basis and it is the intention that we will continue in this way.

Artificial intelligence is a fascinating topic. It will change our world in ways we cannot even imagine. It will change our world as much as the Internet did. There will be great new applications and great opportunities arising from it but also great risks and changes for the worse. It is important that we get it right. A dedicated committee to tease out some of these issues is a very good idea. The difficulty we have had of late with committees is being able to staff and populate them because there are so many at present. It is a good idea but we would want to make sure we do not spread Deputies and Senators too thinly among too many committees.

With regard to the Unified Patent Court, the working plan, although it has not formally been decided yet by the Government, is to have the referendum concurrent with the local and European elections in June next year. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is working on this at present.

I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, to come back directly to Deputy Quinlivan on the European works councils because I am not up to date on them. I am aware of the issue from my time at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

Deputy Quinlivan was correct about people who are distant from the labour market. We have close to full employment. We also have labour shortages. We have groups of people who for many complicated reasons find it difficult to get a foothold in the labour market. We need to target them for the additional support they need because we need them.

With regard to the Good Friday Agreement, the priority at is of course to get the assembly and the executive up and running. There are two institutions under the Good Friday Agreement that are still functioning. These are the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which met in London last week, and the British-Irish Council, which met in Jersey the week before. In the absence of Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement is not what it is supposed to be. It is not whole. We are working with the UK Government and with the five parties with a view to getting institutions up and running again later in the year.

Something that is absent, and I do regret it, is a common approach and a common strategy agreed by the British and Irish Governments. Northern Ireland works best, and the Good Friday Agreement works best, when the British and Irish Governments are hand in hand. While relations have improved considerably and we are getting a lot of business done, it is still not the case that we are acting as equal co-guarantors of the agreement. This is regrettable but we are not giving up on it. Certainly in our meetings with the British Government we say every time that we want to restore the type of partnership that existed between the two governments prior to Brexit, which was successful in making the agreement work.

The Government is opposed to the legacy Bill and has not ruled out an interstate action if it becomes law.