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

I wish to restate what a privilege it was to visit our troops in Lebanon. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of Irish participation in Lebanon, with a small gap. A total of 32,000 Irish people have served in Lebanon, which is a huge number. Almost everyone knows somebody who has served in "the Leb" at some stage. What they have managed to do in south Lebanon is to allow people living in that part of the country to have a normal life. A lot of the troops who have come back to see south Lebanon, having been there 20 years or 30 years ago, say they cannot get over how stable it is, and how much economic development is now happening, in particular as the Lebanese diaspora bring their money back into the country. That would not be possible were it not for the UN mission in that region, essentially providing a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel.

It is also a very important part of our foreign policy that we show our commitment to multilateralism by making our troops available to serve on those missions. There are other missions of great importance under way, such as in Mali, for example.

I did not have any political meetings. I met with some of the local council leaders, but they were courtesy calls. There were no meetings with politicians, as such. Inquiries were made about meeting with Prime Minister Hariri but it just was not possible to do it given the short timeframe in which the visit happened.

While I was there, an increase in tensions was reported as a result of the decision of the US administration to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There was a march on the blue line but thankfully no life was lost. Ireland's position is that our embassy in Israel remains in Tel Aviv and until there is a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians we will not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. We disagree with the US administration's decision to do so and we voted accordingly in the United Nations and recorded our protest with the US Embassy. We believe that by taking the decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital the United States has made it much harder for it to be seen as an honest broker in terms of a future peace settlement.

It is the Government's position that we are committed to a two-state solution - the establishment of a Palestinian state living side by side and at peace with Israel - and not threatening its security. In terms of recognition, what the programme for Government says is that we recognise the state of Palestine in the context of a peace agreement. There is no peace agreement as yet. We would have to think long and hard as a Government about recognising a state that does not exist. It does not exist because it is under occupation and we would have to consider the consequences of that. We know that when Sweden recognised the state of Palestine the response from the Israeli Government was to then lock it out of any engagement on the issue.

We are very engaged in the region. As the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, will explain in his speech in the Seanad tonight, we are involved in a significant number of projects in the Palestinian territories, including a solar farm that we are going to help build in the buffer area between the Gaza wall and Israel which will allow Palestinians to have power for more than four hours a day. If we recognise the state of Palestine, while I have no doubt that would have an effect in terms of solidarity, we would then be cut out of doing all the good things we are currently doing to assist Palestinian people on a practical basis every day. It is one of those decisions one has to make as to whether one wants to stand up for people all the time or whether one wants to do practical things to help them. Generally, I fall on the side of helping people rather than shouting for them.

On PESCO, we have not decided yet which programmes we are going to opt in to but they will most likely be around counterterrorism, marine security and harbour protection, but that is not decided yet. We will be increasing our funding to organisations that help Palestinians. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, will make a statement about that in due course. We very much regret and disagree with the policy decision of the United States to cut its funding to UNWRA.

In terms of our Defence Forces more generally, pay restoration is now under way. As part of the public service agreement with public servants, pay will rise between 6.2% and 7.4% over the lifetime of the agreement, fully reversing all pay cuts applied to people earning up to €70,000 and also reversing the 5% cut in allowances.

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