Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister. If I may, I will make a few comments. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to answer them all.

First, on our diplomats in such places as Tehran, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, in my experience dealing with Department of Foreign Affairs staff anywhere, we are incredibly lucky to have talented, dedicated, consistently competent staff across the world. They make us proud all the time. I appreciate what the Minister of State said about the dangers they are facing. I hope we are putting in place whatever measures we can to make sure they are safe and protected to whatever extent that is possible.

There was a great deal of discussion about military non-alignment. Without getting into the political weeds on it, our position on military non-alignment is clear. I agree with what the Minister of State said about the views of other countries not feeling there is an issue with that position. Consistently, in dealing with European colleagues, they understand where we are coming from. However, one of the issues we do have is the lack of expenditure on defence. We have had this conversation before. We are ramping it up, but the odd thing is that in order to be a militarily non-aligned country, greater expenditure on defence is needed, as is greater capacity to stand on our own two feet, because we are not part of those alliances.

That is not something we have done, so it is something we need to change.

Regarding international aid, when I look at, for example, USAID, I think America has gone completely the wrong way. Whatever about all the cuts it made, but before that even, during more reasonable administrations, the way it went about aid to other countries was with strings attached. If you had aid, you had to spend it on, for example, American products or with American companies. I am enormously proud of the way Ireland and Irish Aid have approached that. We give it in a genuinely altruistic way. It does not have strings attached. It is much more effective at achieving the goals it is supposed to achieve, which, in the longer term, protect us from other consequences coming down the line, particularly in the context of migration and that kind of thing. The effects of that are mitigated when we approach aid in the sense that we are supposed to approach it.

On accession, we will go into private session in a moment and one of the issues we will finalise is our work plan. The enlargement of the EU is included in that plan. I was asked about this at a meeting of EU ambassadors last week. I expressed disappointment at how slow we are progressing with enlargement in respect of certain countries. Some countries have very significant problems that will take longer to resolve. There are other countries that have essentially ticked the boxes relating to the Copenhagen criteria and are ready to go, yet there seems to be still a delay. There may be political reasons for that. The Commission representatives at that meeting felt I was criticising them. I understand there is a process. I am not criticising the Commission. However, the Union should be moving more towards enlargement. As a general rule, enlargement is good for the European Union. It is good for us to have more members in and it is certainly good for those members coming in. It improves their standards economically and in terms of health, social outcomes and so on. I support the notion that we push that as much as we possibly can.

The committee will definitely be looking at EU-Israel association agreement. We will hopefully engage with the Minister of State again on that. It is an issue in respect of which there are, I understand, different perspectives within the Union. Various countries have different histories with the State of Israel and the treatment of Jewish people in the past century. However, there is a very clear legal regard to be had in respect of this agreement insofar as the human rights clauses within it have not been respected and we need to stand up on that as much as we have stood up in relation to Israel's actions in Gaza already.

I absolutely agree with what the Minister of State said. When an MEP gets elected, we sometimes say they have “gone to Europe” as if they were not in Europe before they were elected. I will say two things. First, obviously, we are part of Europe and part of the European Union. Second, for us, as politicians, it is often all too easy when something has come to us via European law to say, “Oh, well, it is Europe that has done that. That has been imposed on us by Brussels”, instead of acknowledging the fact that we are part of that process. If we look at the totality of those decisions and how they have affected Irish law, they are all almost universally good. Looking at health and safety legislation, employment rights and equality rights, so much of that has come through European directives and then been implemented here, but also come through Irish activism at a European level. We do not nearly often enough acknowledge that we are part of that and we steer that.

On the EU Presidency, as the Minister of State quite correctly identified, we could spend the whole day talking about this, and two more days on top of it. I appreciate the decision to spread the love in respect of the 250 meetings. I hope to impress upon the Minister of State that when he talks about the regions, it really means places outside Dublin city centre, because Dún Laoghaire feels like a region too. I understand there will be logistical difficulties with holding meetings outside the Dublin Castle sphere, but do not let that be a bar to doing things elsewhere in Dublin. I hope we might bring one of the COSAC meetings to Dún Laoghaire in due course.

I do not know whether the Minister of State wants to come in on anything I have said. I am conscious of time.