Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy and I will try to deal with some of the questions. I thank her for the comments about our efforts with the United Nations Security Council. I assure everybody in the House that we did not aspire to be on the United Nations Security Council again just to sit there and win the competition. We want to make a difference and use all the influence we have, including the capacity to bring people together and build bridges on a council which is quite divided and which has been unable to make key interventions and decisions at very important times. The veto has been used and abused in a way that it should not be. There are many challenges and we are putting together a very proactive agenda for our tenure, which will run over two years. We will be very active in areas like gender, disarmament, peace support, post-conflict recovery and similar topics in the context of which Ireland has credibility.

As a former member of the European Parliament, I understand the Deputy's comments and, I suspect, the frustration behind them. I will follow up on those points.

The best example of engagement between local authorities in the North and the South has been on the Derry and Donegal border. The local authorities there have worked incredibly well together and are still working to really positive effect to drive investment in the north west on both sides of the Border. It is a really good example of how cross-Border co-operation at a local government level can work in a very effective way, particularly in Border counties. I will have a look at the co-operation referred to by the Deputy to see if it is possible to design something similar to that for the future.

Unlike many foreign Ministers across the European Union, I have been quite vocal and public on the position in Hong Kong. I have released a statement on it and we have expressed serious concern for all the reasons that the Deputy understands. We have not made a decision to revoke the extradition arrangements and treaty that we have as it relates to Hong Kong and that will be a matter for the Government to decide. It is not the space we are in right now. Instead, we have had more than one interaction with the Chinese Embassy on the matter and we are working at a European Union level to try to ensure we act in a way that protects the one-country-two-systems approach that should apply to people living in Hong Kong.

See this speech in context