Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I will deal first with the questions raised by Senator O'Brien. Yes, Ireland supports statehood for Palestine. We have made it very clear at the UN General Assembly that if the question of Palestinian membership of the United Nations arises, depending on the way in which resolutions are worded, Ireland will support that. I raised the issue of the settlements in my discussions at the weekend. I made the point that these settlements are outside the 1967 borders. One of the big concerns is the possibility that settlements will continue. There is a particular area outside Jerusalem, the E1 area as it known. It is a serviced site and there is already a police station on it. It is clear that the services have been put in for settlement and it appears the effect of that settlement will be to sever the northern part from the southern part of the West Bank. That would be hugely significant and I made a very strong case to the Prime Minister Mr. Netanyahu that this should not proceed.

On the EU treaty, the discussions in which the Government is engaged with the troika, the ECB and the European Commission in particular, in respect of re-engineering our debt arrangements and the arrangements which were put in place for bank recapitalisation is a separate exercise from the treaty that was agreed last Monday. We have been very keen to keep the two processes separate.

Progress is being made in those discussions. As the Minister for Finance said, our objective is to see if we can get the more flexible arrangements which now apply in the EFSF and the ESM made available to us, which would be more to our benefit than the arrangements put in place at the time these things were agreed. Technical discussions have been taking place with the troika, particularly with the ECB and the Commission, and we expect that they will be concluded by the end of February. Separately, a diplomatic effort is under way in which we are talking with other member states with the objective of winning political support for a resolution of that when we eventually arrive at it.

With regard to the National Transitional Council in Libya, during the United Nations General Assembly in September the United Nations recognised the National Transitional Council as the legitimate authority or government in Libya. I was at the meeting which agreed that position. The position is therefore that we recognise the National Transitional Council as the legitimate authority in Libya. As its name suggests, it is a transitional arrangement because Libya is moving towards holding elections and the transition to democracy. The United Nations will lead that exercise, as was agreed in New York.

Ambassador Mr. Patrick Hennessy was in Libya recently. I met him briefly in the course of the past week and he briefed me on his assessment of the situation in Libya. Certainly, we are anxious to support businesses here that wish to do business in Libya. It is worth mentioning that two Irish residents are Ministers in the new transitional government and, before they returned to Libya to take up their posts, I met and talked with them in Iveagh House. I made it clear to them that, given their Irish connection, we are willing to help them in any way we can.