Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I identify with Senator Ardagh's remarks about the national children's hospital. I believe it would be suitable that Dr. Kathleen Lynn should be remembered by dedicating the name of the hospital to her memory, as Senator Ardagh has suggested. Dr. Lynn was a pioneering medical champion of the poor and of children in Dublin at a time when they needed someone like her to make her talents and commitment available to them. She established St. Ultan's Hospital for infants and ran it at a time when it was one of the only children's hospitals in this city.

I wish to raise a matter that is somewhat removed from that topic. The Constitution requires that the Government should, meet and act as a collective authority. The Constitution also vests in the Government the conduct of the nation's external relations. It seems to me that those two things together require that every member of Government and every member of the Cabinet should understand that there is no possibility of taking initiatives, of a party or an individual kind, in Ireland's international relations.

I note that in the neighbouring jurisdiction, the foreign aid Minister, Priti Patel, has lost her job for taking a private personal initiative outside of the Government regime. In these circumstances and in this jurisdiction it must be asked whether it is remotely tolerable that a member of Government could decide, on a unilateral or a non-party group basis, to bring another Minister of State and another Independent Member of the Dáil to North Korea in the manner in which the Minister, Deputy Ross, the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan and others are planning to do.

I believe this to be a matter of importance and not merely because the whole idea sounds so ridiculous that if one heard it on "Callan's Kicks", one would wonder whether it was going a little bit over the top. It is serious that anybody should think he or she can remain at the Cabinet table and have his or her own foreign policy. It flies in the face of the Constitution and the two provisions I have mentioned about meeting and acting as a collective authority and about the Executive arm of the State having conduct of our international relations.

I ask the Leader to request the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, to come to the House to make a statement about the conventions that apply in this regard, to explain how it is consistent with membership of the Cabinet to take an initiative of this kind and to indicate whether the Government proposes to tolerate this or whether it is relying on the common sense of the North Korean leadership to save it from the ultimate embarrassment of having the Minister, Deputy Ross, visit North Korea and perhaps remain there.