Mr. Barry Andrews:

I thank everyone for their questions and the opportunity to be here today. I am happy to share with Senators the letter I wrote to Deputy McHugh in which I suggested ideas on how we can improve scrutiny on EU legislation here in the Oireachtas. One example is that a member state parliament can give a recommendation to a government ahead of a European Council meeting. That is a right that is almost never exercised across the European Union but it is something that can be done. The Lisbon treaty also gave further rights to national parliaments and it is important that this House is aware of those rights.

On the rule of law and Poland, the Polish Government is captured by an even more right-wing coalition partner. It is a bit like what happened with the Conservative Party in the UK, with a very extreme right-wing agenda that grabbed the party. In this case that the PIS Party has been grabbed by the United Poland Party, particularly the justice minister. This situation carries the danger of escalating and I agree with my colleagues that this must be dealt with carefully. It is possible to feed into a mythology in Poland that Brussels is the cause of all its ailments and we have to be very careful to avoid that.

I do not agree with Ms Daly on Taiwan, although she will not be surprised to know that. The analogy with Spain is not appropriate because Spain is not responsible for a genocide of people within its country. The Department of Foreign Affairs warns our citizens not to travel to China if they are involved in investments of any sort, in case a dispute arises in China and they are subject to arbitrary detention. That is the way our Government views China. Ms Daly is correct to say that the People's Republic of China is singly entitled to representation of China in the UN but that does not mean we cannot defend the rights of Taiwan as an independent state with a sovereign Government. Lithuania is being persecuted because it recognises that fact. We should never resile from that.