Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming here this evening to deal with this extremely important debate. I thank her, as well as the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, and the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, for the work they have done defending Ireland's position on Brexit in the negotiations. They have put up a really good performance in ensuring we do not deviate from what was agreed.

It is important that when we consider Europe, we think about our access to markets. With the United Kingdom in the Union, we have access to 500 million people, and when it leaves the Union, that number will be 440 million people. It is a huge market nonetheless. Prior to joining the European Union, we were very much dominated by the United Kingdom with respect to trade and the markets available to us. That has now totally changed and a large part of our market takes in European countries other than the United Kingdom. It is a major and welcome development.

In my brief time in the European Parliament over two years, I was a member of the internal market committee. It was interesting to see how people worked on the committee, as it was not a case of being divisive or trying to score points against one another. It was a case of sitting down around the table and seeing how we could come to a compromise on a matter. I remember dealing with the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive, and I led the European People's Party group within the committee on that issue. It was an important policy change that was required and there were many healthcare services that we would not have had in Ireland. A person qualified as a paediatrician might have dealt with every aspect of childcare at one stage but now there are many sub-specialties in individual areas, whether that is the maternity, cardiac or paediatric areas. It is important that we now have access to such specialists if they are not here in Ireland. The Cross-Border Healthcare Directive was a very welcome development and change and it demonstrates one of the advantages of being part of the European Union.

It is also interesting to consider healthcare in light of access to information in other EU countries. There is an amount of co-operation between medical practitioners in other countries and Irish medical practitioners and vice versa, and it is extremely important. We have now agreed with the United Kingdom to continue with this even after Brexit but it is important that we also ensure that if a patient requires a service not available in Ireland, we can access that care and treatment in another country.

It is also interesting to look at changes that have occurred. One of the problems up to 1973 was the presence of a protectionist market because we did not want employment to be affected. We imposed tariffs on goods coming in from abroad and as a result we were not cost-effective with the goods we produced. Our costs of production were way higher than those in many other jurisdictions so we could not export to other markets. There were major changes from 1973 through the 1980s but in the long term, they brought benefit to Ireland. We became competitive with costs and were able to deliver goods and services at a competitive price. It was a welcome change.

Women were at one time forced to retire from employment when they married but the European Union forced a change. The question is that if we had not joined the European Union, would it have taken another five, ten or 15 years for that change to have been effected? I am not sure but it certainly could have taken another ten years. Changes were brought about that were beneficial to everybody in the country. There is the simple example of consumer rights, as the Consumer Rights Directive means there is now more protection for the consumer with respect to goods and services. It was an important development.

I know my colleague spoke about the lack of transparency and democracy in the European Union but we have a structure, including the Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament. There are checks and balances, which are extremely important. Within the European Parliament we have all the committees that examine each item in detail. For example, in committee there were 400 amendments tabled to the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive. We had to work and compromise on those, and many of the amendments were tabled by me. When it finished in the internal market committee, it went to the full European Parliament before being dealt with by the Council and Commission. Each item is examined and, in fairness, every country contributes to the final policy.

We can take the example of roaming charges. A number of years ago if a person made a telephone call in Italy, a four-minute call could have cost €5, whereas now it is 5 cent per minute. The change to roaming charges made a huge difference for people and it was an extremely important change. I dealt with another health and safety issue related to the toys directive. A large amount of goods came from outside Europe and there was a problem because many toys had a high level of lead. A European Commissioner went to China at the time and a week later, 700 factories were closed there because China did not want to lose access to our market.

We have made huge progress but we must work on the provision of services. Services provided from Ireland make up approximately 11% of GDP. It demonstrates how we have developed as a country that we can provide services from this country to others. There has been much growth. The vast majority of these services have been developed by companies that started in Ireland and which are Irish-owned and Irish-managed. That is important. There are other areas in which we must work so it is important we do that over the next few years. We will face challenges with the United Kingdom leaving but we can face up to those challenges and continue to provide the employment we now see in this country.