Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I meet with British Government representatives on a regular basis bilaterally, in multilateral fora and at the British-Irish Council, BIC, and British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, BIIGC.

I attended the last BIC in Blackpool while Taoiseach and will join the current Taoiseach in Jersey for the 39th BIC summit today and tomorrow. I will meet at the summit with representatives of the British Government and the other BIC member administrations, where the focus of discussions will be on Building for the Future: Green and Affordable.

Following the last BIIGC meeting in Dublin in January, I look forward to another substantive engagement with British Ministers at next Monday's BIIGC in London. The conference, established under strand three of the Good Friday Agreement, enables engagement on matters of mutual interest within the competence of the United Kingdom and Irish Governments.

In addition to meeting in BIC and BIIGC formats, I am in regular contact with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We spoke by telephone on Monday evening last. This followed our recent face-to-face meetings in Banbridge on 25 May and a lengthy bilateral engagement on 16 May in Dublin. In my recent contacts with the Secretary of State, we spoke about the urgent need to restore the Northern Ireland political institutions. I also reiterated the Government’s ongoing opposition to the British Government’s legacy Bill, which could cause lasting damage to the work of reconciliation on this island.

I engaged with the Secretary of State and other British representatives at the Queen's University Belfast Agreement Twenty Five conference and the Government's Sharing Peace, Sharing Futures: 25 Years of the Good Friday Agreement event at the Abbey Theatre in April.

I met with British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February and I hope to engage with him and other British Government and international representatives at the upcoming Ukraine Recovery Conference in London on 21 June.

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