Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

That is useful. I thank Members for their wide-ranging contributions. In terms of the comments made by Deputy Timmins on Haiti and by other the colleagues in the House, we will discuss this situation in greater detail tomorrow. However, I take this opportunity to express our deepest sympathies and extend our heartfelt condolences to the people of Haiti and to all those affected by the earthquake and the aftermath of it.

Members raised the issue of co-ordination and the need for a swift response. The response from the international community has been swift but it has been hampered by logistics on the ground, infrastructural deficiencies and so forth. At the emergency meeting of EU Foreign Affairs Council this week, which was attended by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, the EU pledged €122 million for immediate humanitarian effort and a further €300 million will be directed from EU instruments to finance the longer term response of recovery and reconstruction. The European Union has called for an international conference on the reconstruction of Haiti. Ireland has pledged €2 million in funding for the relief operation. That is in addition to the €20 million we have already allocated to the United Nations emergency relief fund. We are one of the largest contributors to that fund. The idea of establishing that fund was to have money in place in anticipation of a catastrophe of this kind. We, along with other members states of the UN pushed for that following the tsunami that occurred a few years ago.

On Monday we dispatched 83 metric tonnes of essential humanitarian supplies to Haiti. Irish Aid is working closely with Concern, GOAL and the other NGOs to get emergency materials on the ground. Two members of Irish Aid's rapid response corps have been deployed to assist the World Food Programme. A third member will travel within the next week to assist GOAL in its response and others remain on stand-by. That response corps comprises people with specific skills. We are waiting for the UN and others to indicate that they need a particular expert or a person in a particular discipline in an area where there are gaps. That is the context within which people would come forward. It is expected that experts in logistics, telecommunications, child protection are likely to be called upon by the UN and other humanitarian organisations over the coming days and weeks. An Irish Aid technical team has left for Haiti to assess the short and medium needs and how Ireland can contribute to the relief operation. The Irish people have demonstrated their generosity in supporting appeals from a range of NGOs.

On the battle group question, Council conclusion 5 states that: "The EU and its Member States stand ready to provide additional assistance on the basis of the ongoing needs assessment, including military and civil assets, as appropriate, responding to the UN request." A key point - this also relates to the context of what we are doing here - is that the more we can channel via one source, the more we can create a coherent, concerted, focused effort. I have some concern with the plethora of agencies and people who have come forward. Approximately seven organisations with different account numbers were shown on a news broadcast the other night. My view is that we need to concentrate our efforts and make sure everybody works. That is happening so far and Irish Aid is co-ordinating the humanitarian relief effort among our NGOs and focusing on people with experience on the ground. We had three partners, in particular, in Haiti prior to the disaster, namely, Concern, Christian Aid and Médecins Sans Frontières. The situation there is appalling and we will do whatever we can to support the people there.

I sense that the logistical human resource issue is the key one. I would not necessarily accept what Deputy Costello said about the high representative, Catherine Ashton. I accept her bona fides in the sense that the key issue is the nature of the response. If every significant figure wanted to fly into Haiti, that would clog up the airport. It is not about being to seen to be doing something. In a humanitarian crisis, we just do the work. I am not interested in earning kudos nor should the Deputy be. That is not the key issue.

In terms of the Stockholm Programme, different perspectives were outlined by Deputy Timmins and Deputy Ó Snodaigh. I accept Deputy Timmins's view that we have to be ready and make sure that we are up to speed in terms of having body scanners and all the various instruments we need. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has key responsibilities in that area and is keen to ensure those are in place. Deputy Ó Snodaigh raised various issues concerning military and security matters in the event of a terrorist attack here. We have protocols in that regard and we can opt in and opt out, but the bottomline is that if a major terrorist attack occurred here, I would welcome assistance as I believe the country would. We need to examine these issues and take account of the big picture, particularly humanitarian or other civil support a country would offer, in the way we offer humanitarian and civil support to other countries that have been the subject of attack. After all, we are members of the European Union. We talk about the situation in Haiti and about other horrific events that have happened across the world and we always stand ready to support countries in such circumstances.

The citizens' initiative was raised. The Minister of State, Deputy Roche attended a meeting in Spain last week, at which this issue was significantly dealt with this issue. We would be broadly in line with what members have said on this issue. It was suggested that about a quarter of member states be the figure and not a third. We would share Deputy Timmins's view on that. It is suggested that the threshold in each member state would be 0.2%, as the Dáil committee suggested. Ireland has put forward a view that petitioners should be on the voting register to facilitate checking for fraud, to make sure that the petitioners are genuine and that the signatories are valid. If petitions are made on-line, which they probably will be, precautions need to be taken in terms of fundraising; the initiative should not be used as fundraising mechanism. During the Lisbon treaty debate, this was one of the points we trumpeted as a key advantage for people to vote "Yes" for the treaty. We would be interested in working through that with Members of the House to make sure that our citizens are fully aware of the opportunities the citizens' initiative creates for them.

The template that will emerge to facilitate the citizen's initiative is the ideal one to disseminate across the country and of which to make people aware. We are anxious to do that. We have already had some good experience in our work in this area with eumatters.ie and other websites we used during the Lisbon campaign. The eumatters.ie contained information on Europe. The communicating Europe initiative showed that on-line facilities can be useful in terms of imparting information to the public.

The European External Action Service was mentioned. It is early days yet but we are anxious, in line with what Members said, that there be Irish participation, that the service reflects the broad range of interests and perspectives that is the European Union and that small states have adequate representation on the staff, including the secondment of some of our diplomats. We are interested in this because we want to ensure, as the Taoiseach said earlier, that our influence is strong and positive. There is work to be done in this regard.

The job creation strategy is key, and the 2020 strategy - the successor to the Lisbon strategy - is also important. The Irish position is to try to maintain the central focus on job creation and growth. There will always be a danger that such strategies, when applied to a 27-country bloc, can become spread out, with a range of different strands and issues being dealt with and diluting the central focus of the strategy. For Ireland and across Europe, the focus must be jobs and growth.

I am cautious about Deputy Ó Snodaigh's final remarks. You win some and you lose some, but we have always argued for a more liberal State aid regime in Ireland; in fact, it was the hallmark of our policy for 20 or 30 years and we succeeded in attracting many multinational investors. One of the fundamental reasons we have preserved our autonomy on taxation is that our policy of corporate taxation has been key to attracting inward investment. We may lose some to other emerging countries, but we must be careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water and undermine a key feature of our industrialisation policy for more than 20 years.

I have not covered all of the issues mentioned as Members may want to ask further questions. Deputy Timmins mentioned the Middle East and the possibility of a two-state solution. We are happy with the conclusions that emerged from the Foreign Affairs Council and the European Council itself, which called for an urgent resumption of negotiations that will lead, within an agreed timeline, to a two-state solution with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security. Paragraph 2 of the Foreign Affairs Council's conclusions states: "The European Union will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties." This is an important aspect of the conclusions decided upon at the meeting.

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