Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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There were quite a few questions in that round. Deputy Smith raised Geneva II. On 7 May, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, announced their agreement to convene an international peace conference on Syria, the purpose of which is to revive the Geneva communiqué of 30 June 2012 with a probable focus on the establishment of a mutually agreed government of transition with full executive powers in Syria. Given the lack of progress on the political track in the past year and the deteriorating situation on the ground, not to mention the continuing divisions in the Security Council, this initiative remains the only serious prospect of a political solution to that conflict. There is still a large degree of uncertainty with regard to participation of all sides in that conference. Issues have been raised about other regional actors, particularly Iran. There is a view that with Ramadan starting on 9 July, it may well be autumn before this takes place. It is the only prospect in sight of getting a political resolution and it is one that we support and that the European Union supports.

In response to Deputy Byrne, the funding for the troops in Somalia comes from the budget of the Department of Justice, Equality and Defence. The troops do a great job. They have been participating in the European Union training mission for Somalia. I had the opportunity of visiting that mission last year. They do great work.

On the question of the OSCE and the parliamentary assembly, the Deputy will recall that at the OSCE ministerial meeting in Dublin in December, we agreed on the Helsinki+40 process. The Helsinki final accord will be 40 years old in 2015 and we have put in place a process to examine the OSCE and its functioning. The committee is aware that at the OSCE ministerial council in Dublin, the then president of the parliamentary assembly outlined his organisation's view that ODIHR was not adhering strictly to the 1997 co-operation agreement and announced that the parliamentary assembly regarded the agreement as no longer valid. Following the ministerial council I wrote to the president and secretary general of the parliamentary assembly to express regret at that decision. I emphasised that the prevailing view of OSCE member countries was that election observation should be a common endeavour involving ODIHR and the OSCE parliamentary assembly. There is some overlap and sometimes there are turf wars between organisations and parts of organisations. In an environment where taxpayers' money is involved, there is not much public understanding of the kind of turf wars that sometimes go on between international organisations and within international organisations. I believe, and it is a view I communicated during our chairmanship of the OSCE last year, that we need to see less of that and more focus on the objective of getting the job done in the most efficient way possible.