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

I thank the Deputies for their questions. As the House will be aware, talks concerning Northern Ireland are under way in Belfast. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade is leading the Government's presence in those talks and we are in regular contact. It is fair to say he is more optimistic than before about the prospects of an agreement and he sees it is very positive that these are multi-party talks involving all the major parties and not just the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin. He believes it is a helpful dynamic and I agree with the assessment.

We are all very aware that we are operating in a difficult environment with ongoing uncertainty about Brexit and with a new British Prime Minister to be elected in only a few weeks. That is a difficult environment in which to try to secure agreement, and there seems to be major gaps between the main parties, particularly on issues such as the Irish language, sustainability of a new Executive, marriage equality and other matters with which Members will be very familiar.

The suggestion of a new Ireland forum is good but timing is very important. We are again in a particular environment with grave uncertainty around Brexit and we do not know who will be the new British Prime Minister or what the next British Government will look like. We do not know if the talks in Northern Ireland will be successful. It would be best to have the Good Friday Agreement institutions functioning before we move ahead with something like a new Ireland forum. If we went ahead with some sort of forum on future relationships, we would have to assess the willingness of unionists to participate, as well as people who consider themselves neither unionist nor nationalist. A new Ireland forum that does not include the 1 million people who are unionists in Northern Ireland and who are British or one that does not include the many people in Northern Ireland who consider themselves both British and Irish but neither nationalist nor unionist would be much diminished.

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