Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

On Israel and Iran, I said what I said at the start. There will be conclusions from the European Council next week. One of our priorities is to make sure the focus is not left off Gaza. The one thing we will be making sure is that Gaza is not forgotten in all of this at European level. We are negotiating conclusions for the European Council next week on Israel and they are pretty strong at present. There is another week or so to go but they are pretty strong with regard to what the European Union would be saying about the situation. We are going to continue to work on that. We have been at the vanguard of support for Palestine and a two-state solution. We are trying to be fair to everybody but we are definitely being extremely supportive of Palestine and speaking up for Palestine at European and international level, and engaging directly with the Palestinian Government, its ambassador and various representatives. I know some of them engage with this committee and they engaged with the foreign affairs committee last week also.

My impression of the priority for us from Palestine is that we continue our work at international level. There is strength in numbers. There is strength in the EU, and in the UN if we can get a decision there. There is certainly strength in the EU. Deputy Ó Murchú mentioned the EU-Israel association agreement. For the record, we were the first to look for the agreement to be reviewed. Last month, finally, a majority was found to support a review of it and that review is under way.

There will be a Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday next week. It is the Tánaiste who goes to the Foreign Affairs Council so I do not deal with those files day to day. Certainly, our ambition is that the review be done very quickly. There is a lot of evidence out there and we do not think it should take long to do the review. We will have to await what the High Commissioner, Ms Kallas, says on it. Certainly, we have a lot of engagement with her, and among colleagues, on this particular issue. We will wait for the meeting. It is not a meeting I will sit at so I cannot comment greatly on it.

The issue of the Central Bank does not come under my section. The Government spoke about this last week in the Dáil. I fully expect there will be other issues where committee members will say we did not do enough. By any measure, and by any standard, the Government has done a large amount on Palestine and we will continue to do a large amount. Some things just cannot be done but I must ask Deputy Ó Murchú to direct his question directly to the Minister for Finance.

On a multi-annual financial framework, there will be a lot of talk in the media about CAP being under threat. In general, these headlines happen all the time. More than likely, the Commission will publish proposals with which we do not necessarily agree. The Commission proposals are proposals, and it is very important to remember this when the multi-annual financial framework debate starts next month. We and other member states will put forward national position papers, and I will be more than happy to speak to the committee on what our priorities are when that is finalised. The budget will essentially be decided by the member states' leaders at the end of the day.

We will meet in the General Affairs Council on 18 July and the budget will be on the agenda. This will be after the Commission publishes its proposal. I have already had quite a number of meetings with European colleagues on what their positions on the budget are in very general terms. We expect it to be up to a two-year process. The previous multi-annual financial framework was agreed in July 2020. When it comes to our Presidency in the second half of next year, we will run the negotiations. I saw an article that frustrated me greatly in the Business Post at the weekend. The first sentence was that people saw the Presidency as symbolic. During this one, our civil servants in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Finance will be extremely busy, not only setting out Ireland's position, which they will have done prior to the Presidency, but negotiating the whole thing at a critical point. It is a big task that we have in the coming year and a half.

From our national priority point of view, CAP is essential because we are now a net contributor and CAP is one of the ways that money comes back. CAP does not simply mean money to farmers, which we believe is essential to make sure we maintain food production and maintain small farmers on the land. CAP also funds rural development programmes, such as LEADER in Louth and Meath. They get a lot of funding from the CAP programme. It is very important.

We also have other objectives in the budget. Competitiveness is very important. It is important there be a fund for competitiveness to make sure businesses can adapt and that we have new economic opportunities. We want to make sure that Ireland is at the forefront of this. I have to say the committee would do great work if it had a session with the Department of enterprise on where we see our priorities for funds on the competitiveness side. It would be very useful work in the national interest.

There is no doubt that defence will be a big issue in terms of the European budget. I do not know what form it will take but it will be a big issue because all member states are speaking about it and it is certainly inevitable.

One of my priorities is to try to get more Irish people into the institutions. We are not getting enough in. We are trying very hard, and we are using different methods, but it is very difficult. There are various reasons for this, one of which, quite frankly, is that the competitions are not being run in the way we would like them to be. In fact, one was recently cancelled. We need to get more Irish people in and I intend to use the budget as a vehicle to see whether we can help to achieve this objective.

I intend to use the budget as a vehicle to see if we can help to achieve that objective.

Regarding nitrates, that is a question for the Department of agriculture, which is on it day to day. I do not have an up-to-date position. I can get a note on it but the Department of agriculture has the up-to-date position on it.

Strategic autonomy has been a concept developed by President Macron. It has come to be seen as more and more important. Our position has always been that we support open strategic autonomy. Yes, Europe must produce its own goods and services and it must have its own ecosystem, but we think that we need to have outside influence on that too; in other words, global trade. In this way, we are not going to do everything ourselves and we benefit by having global competition, particularly among the western world.

On defence, there are a number of items at the moment. We may or may not do the security action for Europe, or SAFE, regulation, as I said in my speech last week. We are not borrowing money this year, so we do not need to talk about the budget rules. However, it is a conversation that will happen more and more in the European sphere. We have to be ready for this when we take over the Presidency of the European Union. Ireland will not be putting its national position forward during its Presidency. We will be running the Council of the European Union, chairing the meetings, negotiating among member states, negotiating with the European Parliament on behalf of the member states and negotiating at international level on behalf of the EU. This could be with US or UN bodies or at the COP summits, or whatever else. It will be European Union positions that we will be putting forward. It may be next year, and while Ireland has a voice and an influence, as one of the member states, it is the European Union agenda that we will be putting forward on a range of issues when we take on the Presidency. We have a lot of work to do between now and then to make sure our national perspective on budget issues and all of these issues is very clear. We will be doing this over the next year.