Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

People operating in a political bubble are constantly speaking of referenda and the political implications of the treaty and so on. The issues of most importance to the people are safety of the euro, what is happening in the European economy and the implications of this in terms of their jobs and businesses and future investment here. The Irish Government's focus in dealing with this issue has been to put that up front and to make it clear that not only the treaty but the jobs and growth strategy are important going forward.

On Senator Mullen's remarks on discrimination against Christians, that matter is a priority. I have appointed former Supreme Court Justice Ms Catherine McGuinness as my personal representative in the OSCE context to deal specifically with that area and she is already working on it.

Senators Mullen and White raised the closure of our embassy in the Vatican. I take responsibility for that decision. While as Minister I get advice from my departmental officials, I recommended closure of the three embassies to Government. Senator White referred to the decision to close the embassy in Iran. The point being missed is that we have only a small diplomatic team of 347 people spread across 73 different missions. These people have to service the needs of our emigrants abroad, including in Canada, Australia and so on and of people who go on holidays to various places and find themselves in one kind of trouble or another. They also have to service our requirements across all of the capitals of the 27 European Union member states, service our participation in all of the international organisations and to lead the trade missions and co-ordinate the efforts of our agencies. We cannot spread ourselves all over the place. I took the view - I stand by my decision - that we needed to concentrate our physical and residential presence on a smaller number of missions and for that reason proposed the closure of three missions, one in East Timor, which is associated with our aid work there, the second in Iran and the third in the Vatican. I would ideally like not to have to close any missions. I would like to be in a position to expand missions. We have only two resident missions in all of South America. Our presence abroad is small and we must make maximum use of it.