Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While many of us have had many differences about multiple American administrations over many years, we recall fondly Bill Clinton's necessary involvement in the peace process in Ireland and much more beyond. We are well removed from that now.

We now have Donald Trump and his very simple formula. He took his country's trade deficit with each country and divided it by two. David McWilliams put it well when he said this would probably be a fail in ordinary level economics but it is no laughing matter. It is followed up by wonderful rhetoric such as the following:

I am telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. "Please, please sir, make a deal. I'll do anything sir."

I saved Deputies a Donald Trump impersonation but everyone has probably heard it. It is absolutely frightening. We are talking about somebody who is being led by the nose, economically, by Peter Navarro. Even Elon Musk, who is not someone I would generally agree with, seems to believe this Trump adviser is a moron.

Donald Trump continues on like a 17th century king or feudal lord. We all know he has a cohort of billionaires around him. We assume at some level that sense will prevail when these billionaires are hurting. It is absolutely necessary we engage from an Irish perspective and Sinn Féin will make no apologies for supporting Irish interests. I accept we will be working alongside the European Union because that is necessary. The EU showed solidarity with us during Brexit but, as Deputy McGuinness pointed out, we also had to deal with austerity to save Germany and its banks.

We must engage and we need cool heads. I am going to give the Minister correspondence from a medtech company mentioned earlier. I raised earlier the supports the company needs because of the issue it is having as a result of purchases from the US being cancelled. There is a fear of business being lost in the future and a bigger fear of losing a particular cohort of workers with great skill sets. We need to look at direct supports and we need every level of engagement. I will talk to the Minister later on this.

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