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

Decisions on security matters, including road closures such as, for example, in the Phoenix Park, are not made by me. They are security matters, they are dealt with by the Garda and the Defence Forces and they must, of course, remain confidential.

At my meeting with the Chinese Premier, I raised our concerns about the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Premier Li disputed the veracity of those concerns and invited me to visit the region to see with my own eyes what the situation is there. I urged China to implement the recommendations of the recent UN report issued by Michelle Bachelet on the situation and to engage proactively with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I also raised our concerns with regard to the human rights situation in the other special autonomous regions of Tibet and Hong Kong but we did not discuss any particular religious groups, including Falun Gong. I stressed our ongoing concerns about the national security law in Hong Kong and the clampdown there on media freedoms. We welcomed the resumption of the EU-China human rights dialogue to discuss issues including Tibet and the situation regarding human rights defenders. In June last year, the European Council set out its approach to China, shared by all EU states, which makes clear our desire to engage with the Chinese Government. The EU wants to see a balanced, reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship with China, with a level playing field for our businesses. I am particularly pleased to see co-operation mechanisms between the EU and China advanced. It is important that China and the EU have strong and productive engagements on critical issues like climate, digital development and the sustainable development goals. It is equally important that we engage with China guided by values and interests. We welcome that the dialogue has continued.

I also reaffirmed Ireland's long-standing adherence to the One China policy and our recognition of the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Government of China. We emphasised our view that any change to the current status quoshould only happen through peaceful and democratic means and that while we uphold the One China policy, we seek to maintain economic, cultural and interpersonal ties with Taiwan.

Deputy Ó Murchú referred to the tech sector. I join him in expressing my regret at the bad news about the jobs at PayPal that will be lost in his constituency. It is important that workers get a decent redundancy package. That is normally the case when a large successful company lays off staff. Certainly, the Government will be there to make sure they get any social welfare entitlements they may need, as well as advice around job search, alternative jobs and careers, and perhaps help with going back to education, gaining a new skill or setting up their own enterprise. I know people who lost jobs in the tech sector previously who went on to set up their own businesses and have done extremely well. I wish the workers the best in that regard.

The Deputy also raised the letter to President von der Leyen. We invited other countries to co-sign the letter. They declined for their own reasons and that has to remain confidential for reasons of diplomatic confidentiality. My understanding is that any decision to formally suspend the agreement would require a unanimous decision because foreign policy matters are subject to unanimity in the EU and do not fall under qualified majority voting. I would be up for that being changed. I would like to see the EU adopt common foreign policies by qualified majority voting. We would need to have a reasoned debate about that in this House and among the general public because while we would be on the winning side of most votes, we would not always be. We would have to bear in mind that this would leave us in a situation sometimes where we would be bound by foreign policy positions we do not support. That happens in other fields of EU competence but not as yet on foreign policy. We would need a proper debate about it if we were ever to go down that line.

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