Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)
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Question 14: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the steps being taken to promote the updating of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty at international level; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25155/06]

Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Question 15: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he has held recent discussions with his European counterparts with regard to reform of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25154/06]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 14 and 15 together.

Ireland has a particularly close association with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which came into being following an initiative taken by the late Frank Aiken. His pioneering efforts were recognised when Ireland was invited, following the Treaty's negotiation, to be its first signatory in 1968. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs has made clear on a number of previous occasions in this House, support for efforts to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains our highest priority in the area of disarmament and non-proliferation.

At the last NPT Review Conference in May 2005, there were a number of specific proposals on actions that States Parties might take to meet the challenges confronting the Treaty. Regrettably, the Conference ended without agreement on substantive conclusions and recommendations on how to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

The next scheduled Review Conference of the NPT will not take place until 2010. It will be preceded by a series of preparatory committee meetings beginning in 2007. The EU has not yet begun its internal deliberations for these meetings but these will be on the basis of the Common Position agreed in April 2005, which remains valid. In the meantime, Ireland is working with like minded countries and with civil society to identify areas where implementation of the Treaty can be strengthened.

On 23-24 May last, for example, together with two of our partners from the New Agenda Coalition, Sweden and New Zealand, Ireland co-funded a seminar on NPT issues organised by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament research (UNIDIR). The Seminar, entitled "Unfinished Business: Building on the NPT 2005 Review Conference" took place in Geneva and brought together relevant Government experts and representatives of civil society to look again at a number of key issues which had been raised at last year's review Conference but on which debate had been curtailed by time constraints.

We are also participating in the Article VI Forum, which is focused on discussion of the nuclear disarmament obligations set out in Article VI of the Treaty and which is being organised by an umbrella group of NGOs, the Middle Powers Initiative. The next meeting of the Forum will be held in Canada at the end of September and will aim at identifying concrete proposals to assist the process of nuclear disarmament. The Chair of the international Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Hans Blix, who has recently released a highly significant and relevant report, is to address the Forum on his findings during the September meeting.