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

The way we structure free trade and our trade relations is on a number of tiers. We have the European Union, which is a free trade area of which we are part. It is a single market with unrestricted trade. There is a series of countries with which we have free trade agreements. Very often in these agreements there are chapters on human rights, trade and labour rights. There are the countries that fall under the WTO rules with most favoured nation status. Then there are countries against which there are sanctions. These sanctions are imposed at European level and include cases such as Russia, Venezuela and others. Of course we adhere to these sanctions. If there are sanctions, Ireland adheres to them. It is fair to say we will not be seeing trade missions to somewhere such as Russia any time soon. We have removed our Enterprise Ireland offices from there.

I do not agree with the death penalty. I voted in a referendum to prohibit it in our Constitution. I disagree with the fact that Saudi Arabia carried out those executions. It is not the only country that has the death penalty. I am pretty sure the US has probably executed more people than Saudi Arabia in recent years. I may be wrong about that but it does have a death penalty and uses it regularly. The Deputy's party leader and her party regularly go to the United States for engagements with people there, including politicians who support the death penalty. China does the same as does India. I do not support the death penalty but if we were to get to the point where we did not engage in trade or trade missions with countries that did, we would be knocking our biggest trading partners, including the US and China, off the list. I do not think that would be a good idea.

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