Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is exactly what it will do. That is what the document will detail but for example, in the case of our embassies, there are many ways that we can double our diplomatic presence. We could just open the exact same number of embassies again or, in some places, we might decide to build up the embassy. We have a lot of embassies that only have one or two members of staff where we might go to four, for example. In a lot of countries the staff are only able to cover the capital and very rarely get to other parts of the country and that is something I would like to see changed. We have already allocated funding for extra staff for IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and Bord Bia. The Deputy is correct in saying that there have been delays in recruiting same but they are being recruited. Indeed, just as I arrived in Canada, an additional Enterprise Ireland staff member had just been recruited.

The speech made by President Macron was, of course, discussed in Tallinn. The major topic of discussion on the Thursday night in Tallinn was the future of Europe and during that debate we discussed President Macron's vision for the future of Europe, Jean Claude Junker's state of the Union speech and the speech made by Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence. I am not in a position to go through in detail all of the suggestions that President Macron made but it is fair to say that I would agree with some and disagree with others. We will have time to go into that in more detail in the future.

This plan does not cover our international development aid commitments. It is not about that but we will need a separate plan in that area. I am familiar with Deputy Burton's excellent work as a former Minister of State with responsibility for that area in the 1990s. We are now very far behind in honouring the commitment to reach 0.7% of GNP or GNI*, as the case may be. I think we are at about 0.33% at the moment so we would need to double our budget, which would be an increase in overseas development aid spending of something like €600 million or €700 million per year, which is a lot of money. That is not the kind of thing we could do in a couple of years but I would certainly like us to set out a schedule as to how we might to do that in a realistic timeframe and then hold ourselves to account on an annual or biannual basis.

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