Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Under the shared island initiative, we are trying to do specific projects and programmes, for example in paediatric and cardiovascular health, cardiac surgery and the cancer centre at Altnagelvin hospital. Those are good programmes that have worked very well.

Deputy Quaide referred to Prime Minister Starmer. I do not see him as an authoritarian person when I meet him. I spoke about the continuum of protest. I am not au fait with British security services or why they came to do what they did in respect of Palestine Action. We have proceeded differently in this country. When I meet Prime Minister Starmer, I will have an opportunity to deal fundamentally with a range of issues although we cannot deal with every single issue. The UK has had challenges on both sides of the political spectrum in respect of protests and the nature of those protests.

I dealt with the points raised by Deputy Shane Moynihan about Operation Denton. The Sudan issue is one I have raised consistently with leaders, including publicly, at the G20 summit and at the Africa-European Union summit. It is catastrophic. It rarely gets mentioned in this House, but 12 million people have been displaced. Genocide against the civilian population is happening there. Some of the rebel forces are being supported by neighbouring countries with arms and so forth.

To respond to Deputy Conway-Walsh, the framework is Article 2 compliant. It is far stronger than its predecessor as a legacy Bill.

Deputy Murphy raised the new co-operation agreement. It absolutely makes sense that we co-operate very closely with the United Kingdom on the gas connectors, for example. Those are a huge security vulnerability for both the UK and Ireland, but particularly for Ireland. Within a week, our economy would come to a standstill if anything untoward were to happen to those interconnectors. I hope the Deputy would agree that we should have close defence co-operation for our economic security, in particular, and for our subsea cables. That will mean a lot of technological co-operation. When a Russian shadow fleet crosses over those pipes or subsea cables, very often divers have to go down and check that the pipes are okay. That is co-operation. Letting people know that somebody who might be up to not good is in your terrain is co-operation. Intelligence services sharing information about terrorists or potential attacks is co-operation. There should be no big deal about co-operation.

By the way, on the origin of our neutrality, it was not an anti-imperialist origin. In fact, at the consultative forum, there was a very good seminar on our neutrality and its origins. Obviously, the Second World War was at the core. We were neutral in not having issues with Britain and the occupation of Northern Ireland and so on, but the more fundamental issue was that it was a neutrality of survival. No one was in a position to defend Ireland in 1939, 1940 or 1941. There were good presentations made at that consultative forum but Deputy Murphy boycotted it because he felt it was not worthwhile. It would have been informative had he gone. It would have provided a more nuanced view-----

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