Ms Clare Daly:

I will start with my good friend, Senator Martin Conway, whose presence at the Europol meetings is sadly missed. We look forward to his return. To respond to his questions on health, he is right that post Covid we are going to see a scenario where there is a drive for Europe to take over a health competency. That is currently a member state competency but the truth is that big pharma is there in the wings. While we can say at one level that the EU played a very good role in eventually getting vaccines out to member states, it also played a very counteractive role in blocking the dispersal of vaccines on a global scale, even though nobody can be safe unless everybody is safe, and that is down to big pharma. We know that the EU has interfered with health budgets in other scenarios. Going forward, how do we deal with that? The European Medicines Agency has done quite a good job. It has been beefed up and more work is being done in that area. However, we must be very careful about possible privatisation and moving in on the health portfolio. I would be a little wary in that regard.

On the disparity between the regions, it strikes me that this is a consequence of years of successive government policies which focused too much development around Dublin. Uneven development in Ireland is a question for the Irish Government rather than the European Parliament. We do not have a stick with which to beat Ireland on that but there are plenty of resources there with which to insist on more even-handed development.

The two cases raised by Senator Murphy are very important. We have raised them with the authorities in Iraq and China and with our own diplomatic forces here. It is a bit like the Ibrahim Halawa case which we raised when we were in the Dáil. These are complex diplomatic issues which need to go through a process but the more they are spoken about and dealt with, the better.

On the rule of law, there is no doubt that what happened in Poland is a game changer. We saw the government of a member state actively going to its national constitutional court, a court it created, seeking an opinion that EU law is of lesser importance than its own national law. The court the Polish Government set up said that the government was right. This is a huge crisis for the EU. It has been decided to impose fines, the Commission has taken Article 7 proceedings and the Parliament is looking to take action. There must be a strong response but it must be an even-handed one. Chancellor Merkel was right when she said at the recent European Council meeting that we need dialogue. We cannot start putting people into camps or the whole thing will unravel. That said, there is no doubt that we should not be paying any money to people who violate fundamental rights.

I am not aware of what China is supposedly doing in Lithuania but in terms of Taiwan, as Senator Horkan said, Ireland like all EU countries has a One-China policy. It is not a matter of choice for me but a matter of international law and UN relations. It was very unhelpful for the European Parliament to introduce a motion on Taiwan. What would we say if the Chinese Government passed a motion seeking diplomatic relations with Catalonia, for example, against a backdrop of Russia arming the Catalans? I do not think the Spanish would stand for that. I am very concerned about the build-up of militarism in Taiwan and the fact that the US has been arming the Taiwanese military. I do not think aggression is helpful. Dialogue and diplomatic relations are what is needed. I remember that there was murder here when some colleagues went to Taiwan but I believe that people can go to Taiwan if they want to. It is not my business-----