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

I have explained on a number of occasions why EU membership is good for Ireland and why Brexit is bad for the UK, bad for Ireland and bad for the EU. I have also explained the peace process and a hard border, what that would mean and why we are doing all we can to avoid it.

The issue of climate change was raised but his focus was more on air quality. He was keen to point out that, at least in his assessment, air quality in the US has improved since he became President.

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's legislation, I have explained on a number of occasions why we do not think it is a good idea. It is not about trickery. It will not assist in reducing greenhouse gas emissions per se and could undermine our energy security by requiring us to import more in the future. As many people do, including most climate scientists, we see natural gas as being a transitional fuel. As we move off coal and oil, we will use gas, which produces probably half the emissions. For decades to come we will still use gas as part of our power mix and businesses, farms and homes will use natural gas too. Therefore, if we are going to use it, we think it makes more sense to use ours than to import it from Russia or the Middle East or to import shale gas from America. That obviously does not make sense economically or in terms of energy security and actually comes with an environmental risk because shale gas is much dirtier than the natural gas that would come from under our seas. There is also the risk of leakages along the way.

As I stated yesterday, what the Government supports and will drive forward is what we refer to as sensible climate action - measures that make our air cleaner, actions that make our homes warmer, actions that improve our quality of life by, for example, reducing commuting times and, above all, actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is what is all about. What we will not support are climate actions that increase poverty or make people poorer, that take away people's jobs without offering alternatives, make us less secure or do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all.

I did not have any private discussions with any members of President Trump's delegation, other than to exchange pleasantries. The time and opportunity was not there to have any one-to-one conversations with any of his delegation. On this occasion, I did not have the opportunity to raise the issues of Israel and Palestine but we have done that at previous meetings.

On the trade surplus, we discussed that both with President Trump and with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. When it comes to assessing the issue of trade distortions and trade surpluses, President Trump focuses on merchandise rather than services. He counts the merchandise surplus but does not have regard to the services. That is very much how he sees things: in terms of physical goods, not services. We had a disagreement on that, as Deputies can imagine. I pointed out that, in a modern economy, it is more about services than merchandise and that the US has a significant services surplus over us which more than balances out the merchandise surplus that we have over it. I also pointed out that many of these measurements are distorted by the fact that there are such large US companies with operations here.

See this speech in context