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

I have not had an opportunity to take a look at it in detail yet but I understand that there is a survey out today which indicates that support for the European Union among Irish citizens remains very high. Something of the order of 90% of people support Irish membership of the European Union and see its benefits for citizens. That is very encouraging. One of the silver linings to Brexit has been that more and more Europeans across member states seeing the reality of what leaving the European Union entails perhaps have a better understanding of the benefits of European Union membership, which is to be welcomed.

I never like to think about these issues in terms of a simple transfer of powers from national capitals to Brussels. That is a very binary analysis. Talk about national powers and Brussels is the kind of Eurosceptic language one tends to hear from anti-European British Conservatives and so on. I do not really think this describes the world in which we live any more. The truth is that there are many problems and challenges that are beyond any nation state to manage, whether mass migration, climate change or security threats such as cyberattacks. It is not as if member states could manage these problems effectively on their own. The only sensible option is for us to do things on a multilateral level, whether through the European Union or, in some cases, through the United Nations. I never like to see things as a transfer from the nation state to the Union; I see it rather as a question of how we can best solve and manage these problems. That is how one decides where the competence should lie. I put the idea in the speech, which is largely my own work - not all speeches are, but many are - and I very much like the idea of competencies being repatriated from member states back to regions and municipalities. I often remark that one sees in the United States that cities and counties can sometimes do things that member states of the European Union cannot do.

That is because there is a lot of local democracy in the United States. However, when I try to think of examples of things I would like to see removed from European law and transferred to local authorities or national Government, it is difficult to come up with them. It makes sense that there are things that are now done at European level that do not need to be and that could be done at a national or administrative level, but if I was asked to name three or five of them, for instance, I would struggle to do so. Sometimes things such as labelling are suggested, but the whole point of the Single Market is to have consistency across that market. They are difficult to think of but if Deputies have suggestions for European competencies that could be transferred to member states, I would be interested to hear them.

On Ireland's position on military neutrality, Ireland is a neutral country. We will not join NATO or sign up to a mutual defence pact. The Government fully supports the triple lock so that any military operation in which Ireland takes part will require Government approval, approval of the Dáil and a UN mandate, notwithstanding the restraint that puts on us with China, Russia or perhaps the United States vetoing certain things. However, there are new global security threats including terrorism, mass migration, cyber crime, human trafficking and modern slavery. They cannot be dealt with by member states alone. There must be co-operation, which is one of the reasons we signed up to PESCO. Ireland is a founding member of PESCO, which will allow us to co-operate more on security where we choose to do so. I do not think that Ireland will ever be a military power. We will never buy aircraft carriers or invest taxpayers' money in expensive missile systems. We have very little to offer by way of military prowess and can offer more to European security through other things we do such as peacekeeping, the participation of our Naval Service in the Mediterranean rescuing migrants and co-operation in other areas, such as cyber attacks. That is where we see ourselves, rather than in trying to do what France and Germany do and becoming a military power or replicating them in some way, even if it is 2% or 5% of what they do. We want to do something different and contribute to European security through other mechanisms, some of which I have mentioned.

I am a very strong supporter of a common foreign policy for the European Union. We can be much stronger in the world if the EU acts together. Sometimes it is not possible for us to agree on a common policy. In those circumstances, each country's policy is independent and remains so. It is better if we can agree. We have spent much time discussing this at European Council meetings. We should not forget that in the world in which we live, Europe is increasingly a union of small states. Germany, which is the biggest country in the EU, has a population of about 80 million. I do not think that it is even in the top 20 most populated countries globally and if it is, it is so only barely. It is far behind the populations of countries such as the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam, countries one would not think of which have populations bigger than any country in Europe. Europe's position, whether in population or the size of its economy relative to the rest of the world, is falling. Some suggest that by 2050 Europe might make up less than 10% of the world's population or economy. We should bear in mind that it is a very different world from when these institutions were established in the 1950s and 1960s when the European population and its economies was much greater relative to the rest of the world.

On social solidarity and social Europe, my speech in Leuven referred to the Gothenburg proclamation which the Government was involved in drawing up. I attended Gothenburg with the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, and the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, to sign up to that proclamation. That is about putting fire back into the engine of the idea of a social Europe. Europe has never just been about economics, but also about raising social standards, employment standards, and having a common labour market. Due to the crisis of the past ten years, the fire has gone out of the engine of social Europe. The opportunity exists, now that European economies are strong again, to put fire back into the engine of social Europe, which is something the Government wants to do. The Gothenburg proclamation gives us a good agenda. There are issues we can pursue as Europeans, from auto enrolment to ending the pension apartheid that exists between public and private sector workers to things such as family leave. I wanted to speak about that in Leuven because the social market economy is very much a Christian democratic concept. Wilfried Martens was one of the great Christian democrats of his time. The social market economy has often been a part of the centre-right's agenda and it is very different from socialism, which is about state control of the economy and society. The social market economy, which is a Christian democrat concept, accepts that the market is the best way to produce wealth but that the Government's role must be to contain and manage the market economy so that it delivers social goods -----

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