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

I do not know for certain. That is something I will be talking to Michel Barnier, Jean-Claude Junker and Donal Tusk about on Thursday. I imagine it will be something similar to what we have had in the last number of months where no member state was a member of the task force, but Ireland was, if one likes, behind the door in the next room when it came to any issues pertaining to and specific to Ireland - not general issues. I suspect it will be something on those lines, but I will have an opportunity to meet Mr. Junker, Mr. Tusk and Mr. Barnier at the EPP summit before the Council. That is one of the things we will discuss there and thereafter also.

Deputy Micheál Martin picked up on a remark I made about no future Irish Government leaving Irish citizens in Northern Ireland behind. Certainly I did not mean any offence by that. I was not referring to governments that existed in the past 20 years. Good work was done by the Government of the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Deputy Martin's work as Minister for Foreign Affairs during some of that period was sterling work and something of which he should be very proud. I was not trying in any way to disparage or make any offensive remarks about any Government in the past 20 years, not least the ones that succeeded in putting together the Good Friday Agreement. I was making a more historical point, referring to the fact that in the 1920s we were forced to accept partition. We were weak as a country; we were a fledgling country and had to accept partition. As a consequence we left behind hundreds of thousands of people who consider themselves to be Irish and were, in fact, then and remain Irish citizens. Then through the 1920s and 1930s let us not forget that it was governments in this State and this Oireachtas that put up the customs posts in the first place that then through in the 1930s engaged in an economic war that divided us further from Britain and from Northern Ireland.

Looking back historically in the 1950s and 1960s, Irish Governments at that time could perhaps have done more to vindicate and stand up for the civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland at that time. That is what I was referring to and not the past ten or 20 years. Certainly it was not-----

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