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

In terms of the forthcoming EU summits, there is a regular summit in October and a regular summit in December, and there is the possibility of a special summit in November, if it is necessary. That has yet to be confirmed but we agreed there would be one if it is needed either to confirm an agreement or to study the fact that we do not yet have an agreement. Obviously, I would much prefer it if we could conclude the withdrawal agreement, including the Irish protocol and the political declaration on the new relationship, which are the three elements that go together and have to be agreed, at the October summit rather than having to have a special summit in November. I certainly would not want to wait until December but that is not something that is entirely under our control. The timeline obviously works back from the end of March, when the UK will leave the EU, and sufficient time has to be available for the UK Parliament and the European Parliament to ratify any agreement. I imagine that if they had to, both Parliaments could do that quite quickly, but it would be far from ideal to have a situation where this was left to run on into November or December, or even into the new year. That would be most regrettable and I sincerely hope we are all able to avoid that. I think we would start to see a significant impact on confidence in our economies if it was allowed to run on that long, so I will do everything I can to make sure we have an agreement sooner rather than later.

In terms of integration and diversity, I disagree with Deputy McDonald's assessment.

I appreciate that there are plenty of issues and shortcomings, of which direct provision may be one, but one in six people in Ireland was not born here, which is very high relative to that in other countries. It is higher than the figure in Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. We have done much better on integration than those countries, largely because immigration has been diverse, rather than migrants coming mainly from one country. They have come here from other parts of Europe and all over the world. In addition, they are very well integrated into the labour market and, in fact, more likely to be working than the average Irish person and paying tax. In many areas, in particular the health service, they are holding up public services, as well as helping to bring investment from large companies to Ireland, whether by Facebook, Google or others. The other day I was at a very good project which was led by Deputy David Stanton but which also very much involved the private sector to encourage migrants who were not part of the labour market to become involved in it and overcome the barriers they were facing. A lot of good work is being done in these areas, albeit it is never going to be perfect. No country can state it has achieved perfection in dealing with migration and integration, but we have done pretty well relative to other states, given, in particular, that one in six people in Ireland was not born here. This suddenly became a net inward migration country, when for decades there was outward migration. I am pleased and proud that during the deep recession when there was very high unemployment and living standards were falling, people did not turn to anti-immigration or racist politics in the way they have in other countries when times have been tough.

Shall I continue?

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