Mr. Tony Connelly:

To pick up on Mr. Montgomery's point about embassies, I would make one observation. Obviously, when the decision to open embassies in every member state was taken, none of this could have been envisaged but the Government is probably happy now there are embassies in the Baltic states at this time because the centre of gravity is shifting east in terms of the war in Ukraine and in terms of Ukaine's accession. I am sure the political reporting from those countries is vital.

On the question of where Ireland fits, the way it was put to me by a senior Irish official only a few weeks ago was that we are a constructive, progressive member state and we take positions and we argue our case. It is true Ireland has always - it is a bit of a cliché - punched above its weight. Certainly, in the Brexit negotiations, the Irish question was well handled. It was prominent in the minds of member states which perhaps would not have had any innate sense of Irish political history. There was, obviously, a huge pedagogical operation ongoing by the Irish Government, of which effort Mr. Montgomery was part.

We are under the spotlight in terms of the big digital technological companies in Ireland, the question of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and whether the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is able to handle all of these cases in a bipartisan manner. One will always get that suspicion in some quarters. Of course, there is new legislation coming down the tracks on e-evidence and social media requirements to provide information on hate speech etc. This will place a burden on the Irish Data Protection Commissioner in terms of providing information, if other member states need it, when it comes to e-evidence that might be part of a social media company that has its headquarters in Ireland.

On climate change, we have our own particular problems but the Irish position is well understood. There is much more accommodation of diverging issues at EU level.

The NGO VoteWatch, which does a lot of analysis of votes in Parliament and at Council level, has a chart of how member states view their friendships and alliances. The hard reality is, as far as I am aware, that countries such as Ireland do not feature obviously as much as perhaps we think we do in terms of when a country wants to have a particular position and defend it or promote it. Ireland is not necessarily the first country they will go to. They go to the big countries which have the higher numbers of votes at Council. That is merely a function of our size and population, but it is true to say we have an outsized influence. We are English speaking. We have a unique relationship with America. We have a unique relationship with the UK. I remember speaking to a senior figure in the European Council who said he relied on the then Taoiseach and now Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Micheál Martin, to tell him what was happening in the UK and the US in terms of understanding even the UK tabloid culture. Therefore, Ireland has assets it can and should continue to use in that regard.

On Hungary, I would agree with Mr. Montgomery. It is difficult for the EU. People have argued that Hungary was tolerated for too long in the European People's Party group in the European Parliament. They have since left the European People's Party, EPP. The carrot-and-stick approach appears not to have worked. I have a friend who was there last weekend and he said the degree of billboarding around attacking sanctions against Russia is overwhelming. Speaking to a Hungarian journalist a few weeks ago, he said the Prime Minister of Hungary, Mr. Viktor Orbán, does not kill journalists; he kills newspapers. There are ways in which he does that. That is clearly worrying to the EU, but the threat to withdraw funds does not seem to have changed Mr. Orbán's approach all that much. The one difference now is that Poland is not quite such an ally of Hungary since the invasion of Ukraine, and that may rearrange the furniture a little in terms of how Hungary deports itself at EU level.