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

The meeting with the Prime Minister of South Korea was a good meeting. We now have an EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement in place which has been very successful and has helped us to increase trade between the two countries. The Republic of Korea is now the ninth largest trading country in the world and offers considerable opportunities for Ireland, particularly in the context of the free trade agreement. Bilateral trade between Ireland and the Republic of Korea doubled between 2013 and 2016 to reach a value of €2.6 billion per annum. There have been regular visits to the Republic of Korea to promote Ireland as a trading partner and a location for investment in the EU. When I spoke with the Prime Minister I strongly encouraged him to increase the number of ministerial visits that happen in both directions. It is always on the St. Patrick's Day itinerary for us outbound but we do not get as many inbound Ministers from the Republic of Korea as we would like and hopefully that will increase into the future. The EU-North Korea summit which happened in Singapore was not discussed because it had not happened at that stage.

On the trade issues between the EU and the US, it is disappointing that the US has ended the temporary exemption on new steel and aluminium tariffs which had been granted to the EU. The measures cannot be justified on the grounds of national security in our view and they are an inappropriate remedy for real problems of overcapacity on which the EU has offered the US its full co-operation in multiple fora, including the OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We will continue to support the Commission in its determination to protect fully EU commercial interests, including through World Trade Organisation, WTO, legal proceedings and appropriate rebalancing measures. This issue is before the European Council, which will meet next week. It was discussed in March and I expect it to be considered again when we meet later this month. In March, the European Council restated its commitment to strong transatlantic relations as a cornerstone of peace and prosperity and underlined its support for a dialogue on trade issues of common concern. The view of the Irish Government is that we would prefer to avoid the imposition of tit for tat trade restrictions on tariffs between the EU and the US. Those that have been imposed to date will have a relatively limited impact on Ireland but were it to spread to other goods and services it certainly could impact Ireland. The particular concern we have is for the potential impact on Aughinish Alumina. My Department, with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Industrial Development Authority, IDA, are engaging intensively on this. I have spoken with the CEO of Aughinish personally and made it clear that the Government will do everything possible to assist it. Similarly, the IDA has been liaising closely with the firm's senior management since details of the sanctions first emerged.

The matter is also being raised through diplomatic channels and with our international partners. As has been widely reported efforts are under way on the part of the parent companies to restructure their respective ownerships. If this proves successful and the US authorities expressly agree it could result in the sanctions against the companies in question being lifted meaning that Aughinish may no longer be impacted. That would be very welcome given its value to the area in terms of employment. There is no guarantee, however, that this will happen and that is why the Government will continue to engage very closely with Aughinish and provide any support or assistance we can.

In response to Deputy Burton's question on my engagement with other Heads of Government and whether we compare notes on domestic problems, yes absolutely, I always take the opportunity, if there is time, when I meet another Head of Government to talk about some of the domestic challenges we have, whether around health or housing and ask about their domestic challenges and compare notes. For example, most recently when I met the new Prime Minister of Spain I learnt that Spain's health service does not have access issues as severe as ours yet it spends much less on health than we do. I was trying to explore with him what Spain had got right that it spends considerably less per head on health care than we do but does not have the kind of access issues, long waiting times and so on, that we have. We agreed that there should be an exchange involving Spain's department of health and ours on that. He looked for something in return from me because Spain has a problem with structural long-term unemployment. It has very high youth unemployment rates, with 20% long-term unemployment, or something close to that figure, whereas it is approximately 3% in Ireland. I spoke about how that had been the case in Ireland for decades and how we had resolved that and we agreed that there would be an exchange between our Departments of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and Employment Affairs and Social Protection and Spain's on that issue.

I often find, which is interesting and mildly reassuring but not very that when we do speak to other Heads of Government and Prime Ministers about the domestic problems we face it is very often the case that they face the same domestic problems, to a greater or lesser extent. It would not be unusual in other member states or other countries for the same kinds of problems we have in the health sector to be problems there as well, perhaps not on the same scale but certainly issues such as recruiting staff, waiting times and increasing overcrowding in emergency departments are problems in other countries, even in France. It can often be the case with housing shortages as well.

The capital programme is not a 22 year programme, it is a ten year programme. The national planning framework runs for 22 years, between now and 2040. The capital programme runs for ten years, that is €116 billion to be invested in public infrastructure, in housing and transport, broadband, new health care facilities and new schools. It will not take ten years to start. It has already started. Investment in public infrastructure is up by 18% this year alone. It will increase by another 25% next year, that is an additional €1.5 billion. We are getting this programme done and it is very much under way. The ten year national development plan provides for us to grow our social housing stock by 110,000 units over the next ten years. We grew the social housing stock, by different mechanisms, by 7,000 last year. It will be similar or more this year and will go up to 10,000 a year and more after that, adding to the social housing stock by 110,000. That is a considerable------

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