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

In response to Deputy Haughey's question, Xavier Bettel, the Luxembourgish Prime Minister, is a very good friend to Ireland and has very good connections to Ireland. As the Deputy mentioned, he learned his English in Malahide as a student. I am not sure if the Deputy would have met him back then. Perhaps he did in Gibney's or somewhere else. Of course, Mr. Bettel has made previous political and personal visits to this country and is one of the leaders of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE, which is the liberal group at European level, of which Fianna Fáil is a member. The fact that we are active in those groups - Fianna Fáil in ALDE-Renew, Fine Gael in the European People's Party, EPP, and the Green Party in its group - really helps in framing European decisions. Before any significant meeting, the political groups meet. The Tánaiste will attend the liberal group meeting on Thursday morning while I am attending the EPP meeting, and I know Senator Dooley does a lot as vice president in that space. It is very valuable and probably does not get the recognition it deserves sometimes.

The consultative forum took place on 22 June in UCC, on 23 June in University of Galway and on 26 and 27 June at Dublin Castle. I was pleased to attend and speak at the forum on Monday. We saw over the last few days that an open and evidence-based discussion took place, with a focus on Ireland's work to protect the rules-based international order through engagement in peacekeeping, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. As well as the current threat landscape as regards cyber, hybrid and critical infrastructure, the forum examined Ireland's current and future engagement in EU common security and defence policy and our existing relationship with NATO through the Partnership for Peace. The forum was not a binary discussion on neutrality and was never intended as such. There is no intention to change Ireland's policy of not joining a military alliance. It is, however, a fundamental duty of government to consider the changing and challenging global situation as it is today. There were more than 80 panellists from a wide range of backgrounds and with a variety of expertise and experience, including peacekeeping, arms control and disarmament, conflict resolution, cybersecurity, disinformation, maritime security and the protection of critical infrastructure. The consultation remains open for submissions online until Friday, 7 July. There is no predetermined outcome, and the Tánaiste will consider the report of the chairperson of the forum once it has been produced and will make a decision on what to do with the recommendations thereafter. There certainly has been contact from embassies and other governments about the forum, which Deputy Haughey mentioned, but they would have been to Iveagh House and the Tánaiste, so I am not really across the details of them.

I was asked about energy prices. Energy prices in Ireland are high by European standards. There are some structural reasons for that. We are at the end of the supply chain when it comes to gas, oil and coal, for example, and we have a very dispersed population so we need a lot more grid infrastructure per population than do other smaller countries that are more densely populated. That is not the only reason, however. Prices should come down. There is not a direct link between wholesale prices and retail prices but there is an indirect one. We expect to see prices for gas and electricity come down for consumers over the next few months. We have not yet decided what we will do to help families with the cost of energy in the winter coming but we will have the windfall tax coming through the Houses quite soon. That will give us ring-fenced funding that we could use to help families and small businesses with energy costs, but that is a decision yet to be taken by the Government.

As regards nursing homes, I wish to be very clear that the Government will not close any nursing homes to accommodate refugees or people seeking international protection. However, where they have been closed anyway for two years or more, it does not make sense to leave them vacant. While nursing homes are closing, there are new ones opening all the time. Very often the ones that are closing are small and would need a lot of investment to bring them up to standard and make them viable again. Often it makes sense to build a new nursing home as a new build off-site and does not make sense to leave the old nursing home vacant for more than two years when we face an accommodation crisis.

Finally, we have a well-functioning work permit system. We issued about 40,000 work permits last year. Roughly 20,000 were for people who are not from Europe and another 20,000 were for people who are not from Europe but are already in Ireland for one reason or another. The system works very well and helps us to bring in the skills we need, ranging from technology to construction and now home care and agricultural workers. That is one of the reasons I do not think it is an acceptable excuse for anyone to use the international protection system to seek to come here as an economic migrant. That is not what it is for, and that is why we need to make sure we speed up decisions in order that people who are refugees get that status quickly and that those who are not are served with deportation orders and required to leave the State.

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