Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have a number of priorities dealing with the European Council meetings that will take place. As the Deputy may already know, an informal Council meeting will take place in Dublin, based at Dublin Castle, on 12 and 13 February at which a variety of issues will be under discussion. One of the issues of importance as we go through our Presidency is preparation for the European Council meeting of Heads of State in December 2013 when they address issues of European security and defence. An issue of particular relevance and importance is the manner in which UN missions are currently deployed and mandated. The role of the European Union as a regional entity in providing what I would describe as a European Union based deployed mission under a UN mandate is something that is very important.

As the Deputy will know, 21 member states of the Union are members of NATO and the other members states are not members of it. Some of the deployments have had a NATO dimension as opposed to a European Union dimension. We specifically invited, as I thought it would be of importance and interest, someone at high level in the UN to address the informal meeting on the greater connectivity between the UN and the EU as an entity in peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions. That is an area with which we will be dealing at the informal Defence Council meeting. There is a broad range of other issues to which some level of priority needs to be given such as pooling and sharing between the different member states where we may have joint missions with member states under a UN mandate.

If the Deputy puts down a question, I would be happy to go through all the various issues we anticipate will come up. The very important issue is the operations in which we are engaged in conjunction with EU colleagues. For example, EUTM Somalia, which is headed up by a member of our Defence Forces, provides training for new members of the Somalian defence forces. That training is currently taking place in Uganda but it is envisaged the mission will go to Mogadishu shortly. That is one of a number of issues that will be discussed during the course of our Presidency.

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