Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

The Senator asked about diplomats. I will include in that Irish citizens. My hat goes off to them. We have diplomats in Tehran, Ramallah and Tel Aviv. We have a small number of citizens, in the dozens, in Iran and some more in Israel. In these situations, we always find there are more than we had expected. The advice is very clear: do not travel or go to Israel or Iran at the moment. It is very dangerous. Our advice to Irish citizens in Israel at the moment is to shelter in place. This advice changes all the time, so people need to keep an eye on Irish Government advice and local advice. In Iran, the advice is slightly different. I want to be very careful in how I express this. It is essentially that if you can leave, you should leave. We cannot make that happen for you. There are no aeroplanes in or out of the country. There is a lot of road traffic out of the country. It is a long drive to get out of Tehran. We do not have any support for that at the moment. I cannot comment on our individual diplomats out there except to thank them for the work they are doing. The Department is keeping in close contact with them and other governments, with which we work closely on the ground. It is a new mission. When Ireland was on the Security Council a number of years ago, we had the Iranian files so we worked closely on issues in this area. We have a really good team. It has added so much to what we do. We hope they are safe. The Department is doing everything it can with other governments to ensure we can keep everybody safe. It is a fast-moving situation. I hope sense will prevail and people will resort to using diplomatic means. This crisis and the Iranian nuclear issue can be solved diplomatically, as we saw before, and should be solved diplomatically. We are concerned about it.

The European democracy shield is an initiative of the Commission. It is a flagship initiative President von der Leyen put in place. It is still under development. The committee will be glad to hear Commissioner Michael McGrath is basically in charge of it. As an introduction, European affairs ministers had a lunch with Commissioner McGrath recently in Brussels during our General Affairs Council meeting. This was the topic on the agenda. It is at an early stage. The Commission has written to all member governments looking for feedback on a number of questions. We have sent that back. The Commissioner will be looking at protecting the democratic process, protecting the truth in media, the mechanics of elections and making sure we are resilient in the face of various underhanded attacks on our democracies.

We expect that there will be an all-of-society approach to this. It is not just about governments telling people what to do. It is going to need the media and communities to deal with crisis situations and the protection of our democracies. Digital era challenges are critical too. We expect something in the early autumn from the European Commission on this following this consultation. I am sure he has done with the European Parliament as well and maybe with the national committees. We have responded and we expect that to be a Commission communication. President von der Leyen sees it as central to the Commission's mandate. This communication will be published in the autumn and we can expect a lot to flow from it.

What is happening on tariffs at the moment between the EU and America is that there is constant engagement. That is happening and it is good that it is happening. It is at quite a detailed level. There has been a lot of engagement among member states and between member states and the Commission as well. The Tánaiste has had good engagement with Commissioner Šefovi who is handling it for the EU. Ireland will potentially be one of the worst affected member states. The Tánaiste has also had meetings with his US counterparts in the past few days, which generally seem to have been helpful conversations to the overall process, but it is just a matter of waiting and seeing. There is no doubt that the imposition of tariffs at the level suggested would be extremely damaging. There is a separate process going on in the US on a number of sectors, including pharma, semiconductors and aviation. That is being done under what is called a section 232. That is about national security. That is a separate process within the US. The EU is engaging with the US on that but because it concerns pharma and semiconductors, it could have a significant impact for Ireland. It is good that talks are going on. It is certainly the declared political intention of President Trump to agree deals. Let us hope that it works out. The European Union is always in the space of trying to make agreements as that certainty works for all of us.