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

Among the UK requests was one that the joint political declaration on the future relationship be attached to the withdrawal agreement. The advice from the EU legal services is that this would not be possible and that the withdrawal agreement and protocols attached to it are legal documents in our treaties whereas the joint political declaration is a political declaration. To be called a treaty, it would have to be substantially rewritten.

The second request was for the European Union to give the United Kingdom a legal guarantee that the future relationship treaty, the trade deal, would be in place and operable by 2021, and that even if it were not ratified by all the member states in parliament, it would still be implemented, at least in part. Unfortunately, it was not a commitment that the European Union was able to give. We will make every endeavour in good faith to negotiate the future relationship treaty and a good trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union. We will start those talks as soon as the withdrawal agreement is ratified by Westminster but we could not give a legal commitment to say it would be done by any particular date because the nature of the negotiation is that one has to negotiate. Of course, because it will be a mixed agreement, a mixed treaty, it will require the ratification of the treaty by 28 member state parliaments, and perhaps provincial parliaments in some cases. What was sought was a legal guarantee that we were not in a position to give. If we were to give it, the European Union could find itself in breach. The responsibility for avoiding a hard border in that scenario would potentially shift to the European Union rather than the United Kingdom, which would be a bit unfair.

It would potentially render the backstop inoperable, which is why there was no traction for that suggestion at the European Council meeting.

I did not veto any language in communiques. I do not know from where that reportage comes, but I can only ever assume it comes from people who do not follow European affairs because it is just not the way the European Council works. We have never had a vote in a year and a half and do not wield vetoes. It is done by consensus. That is good sometimes and not at other times, but it is how the European Union works. There is no need to use a veto and I never have done so. There was a draft point No. 5 that has caused some commentary in the media as there was a reference to future reassurances. The reference to future reassurances was not included in the final conclusions because points Nos. 3 and 4 were added and they are the assurances. They are the assurances the European Union was happy to give; therefore, it was not necessary to refer to future reassurances. On deleting the particular language used, I did not propose or lead the charge on it, as I did not need to do so.

I have not had any direct contact with the DUP in the past two weeks.

We had a lengthy discussion on the MFF. It was an opportunity for the Heads of State and Government to outline their priorities. It was really a first round in which people outlined what their priorities were. As is always the case in an estimates process, everybody wanted to see lots more spent in every area imaginable but not many wanted to come up with the money to pay for it or savings in other programmes. It is an estimates process writ large at European level and it is really only getting started. I will speak a little more about it in my contribution later.

On our GNI, the Department of Finance does have estimates which show how our contribution will increase in the coming years. It is, of course, dependent on how much GNI increases and what our contributions will be. However, they are only estimates. The truth is our contribution to the EU budget will increase a lot, not so much because the United Kingdom is leaving but because of our GNI and the fact that the economy is growing so much. It is linked with the size of the economy. We have become a net contributor to the EU budget and will very much be a net contributor to it in the next MFF period. I really hope we will not become one of those countries that sees it as how much we pay in and how much we get out in funding, including under the CAP. We have to remember what the real value of European membership is - access to a single market of 500 million consumers. It is the freedom of Irish citizens to live, work, study, travel and access education anywhere in the European Union. One of the big mistakes made in the United Kingdom - perhaps one of the reasons it is leaving - is that it saw it in that way, that it pays this much in and gets that much out, that, therefore, it should leave and give the money to the NHS or some other worthy cause. People never really talked about the value of being in the European Union. Some in the United Kingdom are perhaps now starting to understand this. The membership fee is very cheap when we consider the access to a market of 500 million people and the enormous rights and freedoms citizens gain as a consequence of being part of the European Union.

Cybersecurity and disinformation were discussed, as was the issue of election interference. There was some concern there might have been foreign involvement in encouraging the gilets jaunes protest in France. A difficulty when it comes to all of these things is that while we can raise our concerns about disinformation, interference in the electoral process and the use of social media to do it, few people are able to come up with workable solutions as to what we can actually do to stop or prevent it. We always need to bear in mind the concept of free speech because one person's disinformation might be another's opinion. We need to be careful that people do not use any of these things as a pretext to crack down on democracy or freedom of speech.

I responded to questions about Rosslare Europort earlier in response to Deputy Howlin.

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