Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have this opportunity to thank the Tánaiste, his Department and all the various Government elements on the Covid-19 response. I have had many telephone calls from parents, relations and even people in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Well in excess of 6,000 citizens have returned. I have no doubt that many of those 6,000 may not go back to where they came from. They will be the vanguard of a new Ireland. They could be the vanguard with their finances as well as their work and life experience. I believe they are the new vanguard post Covid-19. I look forward to seeing what will happen in ten years. I genuinely believe that.

There are 1,000 citizens overseas who want to return. Deputy Ó Snodaigh rightly said that many people in Lanzarote and other areas who are retired want to come back for medical examinations etc. I believe that much could be done there.

I pay tribute to Michael Hurley, who was deputy ambassador in Beijing. His contribution was incredible. I met him several times. I am keen to put on the record my thanks to him for the work he did and indeed my thanks to everyone in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Irish people are proud everywhere they go, whether to London, the United States, Germany or wherever. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade represents our country well. I know from talking to people in other embassies. They tell us how effective and efficient our representatives are as well as how they are able to work the network, including the diaspora of up to 40 million throughout the world. They have done that well indeed.

I thank the Tánaiste for the €17 million in direct funding to the global humanitarian response and for World Health Organization funding this year, which has quadrupled. That was a wonderful signal that Ireland is beginning to take its place as a leader for good in the world. When another leader decided he was not going to give his funding to the WHO, the Tánaiste stepped in. He had one or two detractors but to me it was significant. I was proud that we were able to stand up and be counted in this difficult time.

People talk about the Passport Office. We saw where 900,000 or 1 million passports were allocated last year. Many of the diaspora are availing of those passports. We saw with Brexit how people are proud of their Irish heritage and of their passports. What people do not realise is that the Irish passport is a powerful document.

It is probably the seventh most powerful passport in the world. One can get into 185 countries with it. People talk about their credit cards and mobile phones. Those can be replaced, but a passport is probably one of the most valuable documents that someone can have. In this country, however, we treat it like it is just a bit of paper. How do we get people to understand that it is probably one of the most important documents they can have? They can use it to travel hassle free around Europe and the rest of the world. How can we get people to realise that applying for or replacing a passport is not just like, for example, replacing a birth cert? When I travelled to Australia, New Zealand and around the world in the early 1980s, I had that ambivalence towards my Irish passport, but people told me that it was the most important document I could have. We need to highlight that even more.

See this speech in context