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

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, briefed me on the meeting in Belfast last weekend. I know that it was very well attended and it seems to have been a very successful event. I hope if there is a follow-up event at some point in the future that I will be able to attend in person and continue to engage with that important body of Northern Ireland society.

Regarding European foreign policy, the EU has a Common Foreign and Security Policy, CFSP, and a common defence policy in the form of PESCO, of which Ireland is a member. PESCO is quite new and we will have to see how it develops on a case-by-case basis. We will get involved in various security projects but that will not involve Ireland taking part in a putative European army or getting involved in any military alliances. The CFSP needs to be a lot stronger and it could work a lot better. Europe can be a force for good when it comes to foreign policy. We have an increasingly multi-polar world, with a very strong America but one that is abdicating the kind of global leadership role that it had in the past, alongside an emerging and increasingly influential China. Many other countries are coming to the fore on the world stage while Europe's population and wealth continues to decline proportionately. If we want to promote European values and ideals in the world, we need to have a stronger European common foreign policy. That means leading on issues like international development, Africa, climate change, combatting terrorism and security threats and the crises in places such as Syria and Ukraine. In the case of the latter, Europe acting together as one could have done better and could have helped to bring peace and security to those places.

I note that in the past couple of days a number of European countries have indicated that they may take action against Venezuela. Unfortunately, we do not all agree but the majority of people in this House agree that what has happened in Venezuela is terrible. If one goes back 20 or 30 years, Ireland was ranked 20th in the world in terms of human development by the United Nations. We are now in fourth place. Venezuela was in 40th place, not too far behind us but now it is in 70th or 80th place, which shows the effect that socialist and anti-democratic policies-----

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