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

-----in order to prevent it from joining NATO, which would be its choice, not Russia's, in my view. Whether we agree with NATO expansion or not, I think it is up to individual countries and their democratically elected governments to decide whether they want to join. It should not be decided in Russia or other places.

We of course discussed NATO in our conversations. All three are members. We are not. Most of the countries that I meet in Europe are interested to know why we are not members and how we would defend ourselves in the event of a serious attack. It is fair to say that Montenegro and Macedonia feel more secure, although they are really concerned about Russian interference in their countries and democracies. Kosovo is a little bit less secure because the situation with Serbia is much more tense.

The individually tailored partnership programme, ITPP, was not specifically discussed in any of my meetings. I would have said to them that we are part of the Partnership for Peace, PfP, and have been since 1999. PfP has a separate identity and is based on individual bilateral relationships between NATO and each of the PfP countries. We have no plans to join NATO. However, access to NATO training and standards through participation in PfP has been of benefit to the Defence Forces, particularly when on service with the UN and EU, where they can be interoperable. It is a tailored framework for co-operation and is completely voluntary in nature. I should say that the White Paper on Defence states that Ireland will continue to participate in NATO's PfP with a view to ensuring the Defence Forces have the necessary interoperable capabilities to participate in modern and demanding peacekeeping operations alongside other EU military forces.

I do not agree that an end to the triple lock would be an end to our neutrality. Our neutrality goes back to the 1940s. The triple lock has only been around for maybe 20 or 30 years. It was done in response to some conspiracy theories about a European referendum. I do not believe the five permanent members of the UN Security Council should have a veto at all and I do not believe that any one of them should be able to veto decisions by a sovereign Irish Government to take part in a peacekeeping operation. That is why I would like to see it removed. We do not have any date for that to be done. I do not know if it will be done in the period of this Dáil.

Deputies Ó Murchú and Haughey both asked about accession and enlargement. It is ten years since any country joined the European Union. The last one was Croatia. It is now in the eurozone. I do not think that anyone regrets the fact that Croatia is a member. I would like to see countries join as soon as they are ready. I think it should be done on a case-by-case basis. Not everyone on the European Council agrees that. They would like to see it as a bigger package or an enlargement of the many, linked to institutional reforms. I and the Government have a different view. Let us not forget that we were part of the first enlargement. We joined with Britain and Denmark. I would not like us to be told that we had to wait for somebody else. That would not have been fair. It is important that the one or two countries that are most ready should be allowed to join soon because if that does not happen, people will lose faith in those countries that they will ever be allowed in, then people in the countries that are further back and less ready, rather than turning to pro-European forces, pro-European parties and democratic parties, might turn to the extremes. That is a real fear that I have. It is noteworthy that Montenegro and Kosovo have already adopted the euro even though they are not in the European Union.

See this speech in context