Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy O'Dowd. I thank the Minister for his many interventions this afternoon and congratulate him on his deserved reappointment. I also congratulate the Ministers of State, Deputies Thomas Byrne and Brophy. I particularly congratulate the Minister on his reappointment, albeit with a gap, to the defence portfolio. It is appropriate that, following the major success of securing a seat on the United Nations Security Council, these two Departments will come under the control of one Minister, particularly in view of the importance of our history of peacekeeping in that victory. It was a major achievement by the Minister, the former Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, and the entire team at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

It is something of which all of us should be extremely proud.

Every cent of the €821 million in these Estimates is money well spent. We can be extremely proud of our diplomatic network across the globe and how hard they have had to work in recent months and years on a variety of issues. A point I was glad to hear the Minister reference so many times because it is crucial is the development of the Global Ireland strategy. That is the reason it is key that the 2025 aim of doubling our diplomatic footprint remains. I was heartened to hear the talk of new missions opening soon in places such as Manila and Kiev, following on from the success of the new consulate in Los Angeles and new mission in Mumbai. However, there needs to be an increased focus on our diplomatic footprint a little closer to home, particularly in Europe. What has stood to us so well over the past couple of difficult Brexit years with the Minister at the helm is our amazing diplomatic network within the European Union. We need to be ambitious for that. The EU is our largest export market. It will continue to be so and it will continue to be a destination to which many Irish people will look to move. Ninety per cent of Irish people, according to the European Commission survey today, are in favour of maintaining the freedom of movement as part of the EU's four freedoms. That is the reason we need to be aware of our network throughout the EU. We need to boost our network. We need to look at our new offices in places like Lyon and Frankfurt and see where other examples could be had across the European Union. We must make sure that our embassies, which were kept open through the difficult years of the financial crisis across the European Union, are grown and optimised.

The Minister mentioned the structural works that will have to take place in many of the diplomatic missions across the world. We need to ensure that our embassies within the European Union, but particularly our Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels, maintains the same levels of staffing if not consistently increasing the level of both diplomatic staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as seconded staff from Departments that make their way not just to the Permanent Representation in Brussels but, increasingly, to our embassies in Berlin, Paris and other European states. We talk about new alliances. It is very easy to focus on the big European Union member states such as France and Germany, and they are vitally important, but we have to remember the other European Union member states.

A recent academic study showed that only two European Union member states had Ireland in their list of top three important partners. They are Denmark and Portugal. We may need to look at our diplomatic missions in Copenhagen and Lisbon but, equally, those in every other European Union member state. In the previous Oireachtas term we did a lot of great work in the Joint Committee on European Affairs on examining those new alliances. I hope that with the Minister's passion for the European project, in partnership with the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, he will push that as we move beyond Brexit to the new challenges that face our European Union, both in dealing with the Multiannual Financial Framework and the modern challenges, including dealing with the mop-up practice from the Covid-19 global pandemic.

An area that Deputy Brendan Howlin spoke about at length previously and on which we need to increase our work and our exposure, and it feeds into the overall European Union work, is our footprint within Africa. It is heartening to hear that we will be opening up new diplomatic missions in countries such as Ghana but there is major potential for Ireland to play a positive role in the development of Africa, particularly with the Minister's expertise in human rights from his time in the European Parliament with Deputy Harkin. That is an issue on which we can stake ourselves out as a small independent country that has an extremely proud record, as other Deputies mentioned, of peacekeeping and missionary work within Africa. It is important that we can continue that work but it will require a genuine investment. I very much hope these Estimates will be put to that and that we will continue to see that Estimate going forward. The €821 million to which the Minister referred is an investment. Every euro of that goes into a huge network that provides an economic return for this small State in terms of opening up new trading partners and investment policies. It also provides a humanistic return when we think about our effort in overseas development aid and our outreach to our diaspora. Some are recent members of our diaspora. They are people who left the country in the last economic crisis to go to places such as British Columbia and Canada or Perth, in Australia, or the ancient Irish diaspora in New York, Boston, across the UK and in more bizarre places like Argentina.

I conclude by wishing the Minister and his Ministers of State well in the coming years in dealing with the immediate challenges he faces in the Department and asking him to make sure that every time we look to see what Ireland's role is in the world we do not simply say that we are a small country that has to feed in but that we are ambitious.

I commend the Minister for his outspoken statements on the extremely worrying situation in Hong Kong. I ask him to go further and continue to work with the British authorities and also the commission set up by the former governor, Lord Chris Patton.

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