Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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6. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report his commitment to double the number of staff in Government agencies globally by 2025. [39662/17]

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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7. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on the Ireland's Global Footprint 2025 plan which intends to double the number of Government agency staff worldwide by 2025. [41493/17]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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8. To ask the Taoiseach the way the Government plans to double Ireland's global footprint. [41641/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 to 8, inclusive, together.

While in Canada recently I announced a plan to double Ireland's global footprint by 2025.

Work is now under way, involving relevant Departments and agencies, to develop a fully worked-through plan for consideration by the Government later this year. The plan, which will take a strategic approach, will identify locations or areas that should be an immediate focus, as well as those which should be part of our medium-term plans to 2025.

It will also include consideration of the resource implications, including identifying where efficiencies can be achieved through innovative approaches and potential savings.

Increasing our global footprint will involve new and augmented diplomatic missions, as well as an increased presence and investment in and by tourism, cultural and food agencies.

There is a new self-confidence in Ireland, as an island at the centre of the world. That national self-confidence requires that we should be ambitious, visible and active in promoting our interests and values on the international stage.

This initiative will support our efforts to diversify and grow trade, particularly as we seek to overcome the challenges of Brexit; it will enhance our ability to attract tourism and investment to Ireland; and it will help us to strengthen links with our diaspora; and to advance our values, interests, reputation and impact internationally.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. It is clear from the reply that this commitment was one of the Taoiseach's soft August stories designed to give the appearance of activity without doing anything concrete.

Since before the Brexit referendum, Fianna Fáil has been calling for a significant increase in overseas staff, both to overseas missions and to the enterprise agencies, including IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia and Fáilte Ireland. I have been of the view that we simply do not have enough staff on the ground. It is extraordinary that an announcement of this kind was made, for example, when a number of years ago the Embassy in Tehran was closed, along with that in the Vatican and others.

It seems from the Taoiseach's reply that his announcement was not based on any policy agreed by Cabinet. It was not based on any specific numbers or costs, or recruitment schedules or anything like that. It was essentially blurted out in Canada without any homework at all being done. What the Taoiseach seems to be indicating now is the work has now begun well after the announcement.

I called last year for a detailed staffing audit and future plan. Has that audit been undertaken by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and, indeed, by the Taoiseach's own Department because I asked separately for a complete review of the Department of the Taoiseach and its needs in relation to Brexit? The Taoiseach will be aware that Deputy Donnelly, who has done a lot of good work on this, discovered through a series of probing parliamentary questions that most of the agencies had not even filled the additional staff allocations they had received in respect of Brexit and the staff had not been hired. It is that disconnect between the reality of what is happening in the here and now and the grandiose announcements that we will be doubling our global footprint some time in the distant future.

We need to get with delivery and executing what we have agreed in the immediate and short terms. That would give the people some confidence that propagandistic announcements that are made from time to time will be realised. People are becoming cynical and sceptical about statements that in five years' time this will happen and in six years' time that will happen. We had all of that in terms of universal health insurance and other issues. Has the Taoiseach finished the review of the Department of the Taoiseach and what has he decided as a result of that particular review?

Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an Taoiseach as ucht a chuid freagra.

The Ireland's Global Footprint 2025 plan is lacking in detail about its implementation. No one could argue with the intentions of the plan - attracting greater investment, boosting tourism and trade, building stronger links with the diaspora and increasing cultural exchanges. These are aims that Sinn Féin certainly supports. The notion of increased diplomatic and international agency services will increase the likelihood of delivery, but there is no timeframe that I am conscious of. Could the Taoiseach tell us what timeframe there may be? How will the increases in staff be divided between the diplomatic service and agencies, such as IDA Ireland and Fáilte Ireland? Has the Government reached any preliminary decision as to where new embassies might be opened?

Against this backdrop we have the shifting dynamics within the European Union and we have Brexit. The Taoiseach will have noted the French President's call recently for the need for increased and accelerated EU integration, tax harmonisation and further EU military co-operation. President Macron spoke about a two-tier Europe, a sovereign Europe with its own separate parliament for members of the eurozone who will have their own finance minister, and he wants a single EU corporate tax band. This is the federalist dream, but it also is flying directly in the face of the so-called guarantees that were secured by the Irish Government in the aftermath of the rejection of the Lisbon treaty in 2009. If the French President's plan comes to fruition there will be little need for an Ireland's Global Footprint 2025 plan. I ask the Taoiseach to give us more details on his Canadian statement? Also, what is the Taoiseach's view of what the French President has said and did he raise these issues at the EU digital summit in Estonia last week?

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I suppose my question is probably a simpler one. I would like to know if expanding Ireland's footprint globally includes meeting our commitments on overseas development aid. This would require a very substantial uplift in the work that is being done by the Irish programme in a number of countries, particularly a number of very poor countries in Africa where the focus is to try and assist people, particularly women and children, many of whom are in extreme poverty. We gave an undertaking as a country a long time ago to a 0.7% of GDP commitment for overseas development aid. In this plan to expand our footprint, has the Taoiseach made any specific proposals that we would reach that commitment?

We are now falling behind for the good reason that the economy is expanding again but I assume it will not take five, ten or 15 years to reach the commitment. I ask the Taoiseach to give the House an indication of where overseas development aid and support for the work of organisations like Trócaire, whose representatives were in this House last week, actually fits in.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I can assure the Deputies that this is something to which I am very seriously committed. When I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport I had the opportunity to travel to all parts of the world promoting aviation and tourism in particular, as well as doing other work including general Government representation and IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland work, as part of that travel. I was always extraordinarily impressed by the quality of the staff we had on the ground, our diplomats and the people working for our agencies. It occurred to me that we needed a lot more of them and that it would be a good investment by our country to expand our diplomatic presence and the footprint of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Tourism Ireland, Bord Bia and our cultural agencies. Now that I hold the office of Taoiseach, I intend to do something about it and make it a reality. I did not set this out as an August story. It was first proposed back in May or June in a document which I published entitled, "Taking Ireland Forward". I expanded on it in the speech I made in Toronto in Canada and set the task to my Ministers, the line Ministers, to draw up that plan so that it can be agreed by Government and published by the end of the year.

The intention is, over the period 2018 to 2025, to double our global footprint. That does not necessarily mean a doubling of agencies, staff or budgets but, in the round, that is what it does mean - a doubling of our global presence. It will, of course, involve extra embassies but not necessarily a doubling of the exact number of embassies. In some countries we might expand the embassies, for example, while in other countries we may create-----

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Can the Taoiseach give us a definition of doubling at some stage in this process?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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That is exactly what it will do. That is what the document will detail but for example, in the case of our embassies, there are many ways that we can double our diplomatic presence. We could just open the exact same number of embassies again or, in some places, we might decide to build up the embassy. We have a lot of embassies that only have one or two members of staff where we might go to four, for example. In a lot of countries the staff are only able to cover the capital and very rarely get to other parts of the country and that is something I would like to see changed. We have already allocated funding for extra staff for IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and Bord Bia. The Deputy is correct in saying that there have been delays in recruiting same but they are being recruited. Indeed, just as I arrived in Canada, an additional Enterprise Ireland staff member had just been recruited.

The speech made by President Macron was, of course, discussed in Tallinn. The major topic of discussion on the Thursday night in Tallinn was the future of Europe and during that debate we discussed President Macron's vision for the future of Europe, Jean Claude Junker's state of the Union speech and the speech made by Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence. I am not in a position to go through in detail all of the suggestions that President Macron made but it is fair to say that I would agree with some and disagree with others. We will have time to go into that in more detail in the future.

This plan does not cover our international development aid commitments. It is not about that but we will need a separate plan in that area. I am familiar with Deputy Burton's excellent work as a former Minister of State with responsibility for that area in the 1990s. We are now very far behind in honouring the commitment to reach 0.7% of GNP or GNI*, as the case may be. I think we are at about 0.33% at the moment so we would need to double our budget, which would be an increase in overseas development aid spending of something like €600 million or €700 million per year, which is a lot of money. That is not the kind of thing we could do in a couple of years but I would certainly like us to set out a schedule as to how we might to do that in a realistic timeframe and then hold ourselves to account on an annual or biannual basis.