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

-----and, of course, there was engagement at official level.

The current position with the talks is that both Governments have asked the parties to pause for reflection. We think that is advisable at this stage. As I mentioned earlier, the Brexit negotiations are going to enter a very intense phase over the next couple of weeks. It starts with the publication of the withdrawal agreement tomorrow followed by the speech of the Prime Minister, Mrs. May, on Friday. There will be a further visit of Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, to Ireland and the European Council meeting will be held towards the end of March. It will be a very intense couple of weeks with regard to Brexit so perhaps it is a good time for the parties in the North to pause for reflection.

No date has been set at this stage for the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, but it will meet at an appropriate time on the agreement of the two Governments. In the meantime, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade is in regular contact with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and I am in regular contact with the Prime Minister, Mrs. May. We have spoken on the telephone or met in person at least three times in the past week and a half, and I am sure we will again. Of course, we talk to the five major parties in Northern Ireland and while we are open to having conversations with the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth parties one has to draw the line at a certain point. We engage with all five major parties and, indeed, the leader of the SDLP will be in Dublin this week when I will meet him again.

It is worth putting on the record the general level of engagement the Government has with Northern Ireland affairs. Deputy Eamon Ryan expressed the view that through engagement one can develop understanding and, therefore, agreement. It is not that simple when positions are fixed and sometimes no matter what level of engagement there is positions remain fixed. Since I have become Taoiseach I have visited Northern Ireland five times, which is roughly every six weeks. Another visit is planned. I have had three rounds of meetings with the parties. As a Minister I was involved in a number of cross-Border projects which I will not outline now - I can do that at another time - and attended 20 North-South Ministerial Council meetings, including many with Arlene Foster as my counterpart for three and a half years. The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Humphreys, has visited twice this year so far and in the last year the Minister of State at my Department, Deputy McHugh, has visited six times. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, is due in Belfast on 19 April, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, were there this month and the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, will be there next month.

I am due to meet a group of civic nationalists from the North, the people who wrote the letter to The Irish News, who will visit me in Government Buildings tonight. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, has spent 34 days in Northern Ireland since becoming Tánaiste, including 16 days this year alone. There have been five phases of negotiations. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, spent 12 days in negotiations. Some 30 days have been spent at the talks by officials.

Officials estimate that 80 days were spent at the Stormont talks, further to engagements with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Charles Flanagan. It is an enormous level of engagement. Engaging people, getting to know them, understanding how they think and why they think the way they do does not necessarily result in an agreement where positions are hardened and hard fixed.

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