Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 October 2018
1. Deputy Seán Haughey asked the Taoiseach the details of his meetings with the EU Heads of Government during the 2018 summer recess; the issues discussed at the meetings; and the views of each on the future of Europe. [36139/18]
View answer2. Deputy Micheál Martin asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his meetings with all EU leaders since July 2018 in Italy, Croatia and other EU states; and the areas of Brexit that were discussed. [37317/18]
View answer3. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach if he has spoken to the Chancellor of Austria, Mr. Sebastian Kurz, since July 2018. [37517/18]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together.
In recent months I have continued with an intensive programme of engagements with EU leaders.
On 8 July, I welcomed the Chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, to Dublin. This visit took place as Austria began its six-month Presidency of the Council of the European Union and followed my visit to Vienna in February. I am pleased that Chancellor Kurz chose Ireland as the first member state to visit under the Austrian Presidency. Topics discussed during our meeting included Brexit, migration, trade, the digital agenda and the post-2020 EU budget. These issues all feature on the EU's agenda during the current Austrian Presidency. I also met Chancellor Kurz at the informal meeting of EU leaders which took place on 19 and 20 September in Salzburg.
In July I travelled to Croatia, Romania and Italy, meeting the Croatian President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovi, the Croatian Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovi, and the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament, Gordan Jandrokovi, in Zagreb on 23 July. I met the Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis, the Romanian Prime Minister, Viorica Dncil, and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Liviu Dragnea, in Bucharest on 24 July. I met the Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, in Rome on 26 July.
Topics discussed at meetings with my European Council colleagues included Brexit, migration and the post-2020 EU budget. Bilateral relations, which are excellent with all three countries, were also discussed during the meetings. My visit to Romania was especially timely as the country will take over the EU Presidency in the first half of 2019, the period during which the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.
On 6 August, I met the Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, in Athens. I took the opportunity to express my condolences following the tragic loss of life due to the fires in the Attica region two weeks previously. The Prime Minister, Mr. Tsipras, in turn expressed his sorrow at the death of an Irish citizen. I subsequently wrote to the rescue staff in Greece who helped to rescue one of our citizens there. Our exchanges also covered Brexit, migration and economic issues, where in particular I congratulated the Prime Minister on Greece’s exit from its economic adjustment programme.
I also briefly met several of my European Council colleagues in the margins of my recent visit to the United Nations last Monday, including the Prime Minister of Estonia, Jüri Ratas, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, and the President of Cyprus.
Ongoing engagement and further upcoming bilateral meetings are envisaged for the period ahead and these will be confirmed when the details have been finalised. I will continue to take advantage of every opportunity to advance Ireland's interests with my fellow members of the European Council.
The Taoiseach met many EU leaders over the course of the summer. I have no doubt they expressed support for Ireland regarding Brexit and the backstop for the Border. The October summit will be important but the general view is that a major decision will not be made until November. I now hear talk, however, of another European Council summit in December and that decisions on Brexit may be left over until December. I believe that would be a retrograde step. The European Parliament must ratify the withdrawal treaty, as must the other EU states. I ask the Taoiseach to comment on the timetable in that regard.
I notice that migration was a major issue for discussion with these EU leaders. It is a big challenge facing the European Union. I note what the EU has agreed in that regard at European Council meetings regarding disembarkation platforms, control centres and reform of the common European asylum system, especially the Dublin regulation. I note also that Ireland has opted into relocation and resettlement measures. Ireland can learn from the mistakes of other EU countries. We need to manage diversity and implement successful integration policies. There is no room for Ireland to have complacency in that regard. I ask the Taoiseach to assure me that we are pursuing successful integration policies here and that we are managing diversity, because it is a huge issue in Europe.
There are European Parliament elections coming up next year and migration will be a big issue in those elections. I want the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, to assure us we are doing everything possible in this country to ensure the successful management of migration.
I note the Taoiseach did not refer to his meeting with the British Prime Minister in Salzburg, which I presume happened.
I saw a picture of it.
The British Prime Minister is still an EU leader and has not left yet. It is becoming increasingly clear that the absence of a working Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive is causing major problems in regard to the Brexit negotiations. Instead of having a cross-community democratic body speaking up for the people of Northern Ireland, the majority of whom are anti-Brexit, we have party agendas dominating. The appalling comments today concerning the Good Friday Agreement confirm the damage. In this case, it would have been expected that the restoration of the Assembly and the Executive were an absolute priority for the Taoiseach yet the evidence is that, for the first time, the whole area seems to have been effectively subcontracted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Taoiseach does not see relations between Government Buildings and Downing Street as central to the process.
This is the only conclusion we can draw from the irregular contact which the Taoiseach and Prime Minister May maintain. Earlier this year they went seven weeks without speaking. Before Salzburg they went ten weeks without speaking. They do not appear to have had a bilateral session focused primarily on Northern Ireland since the shambolic visit to Stormont in February, when the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister flew in to take the glory for a deal which never materialised. While Michel Barnier is our chief negotiator on Brexit, the Taoiseach is supposed to be our chief negotiator on Northern Ireland. What initiatives does he intend to take to engage the British Government on this? Is it his position that irregular and short conversations display a decent working relationship or a real priority for Northern Ireland?
It should at this juncture be clear even to Deputy Micheál Martin that at the heart of the crisis and the hiatus in the institutions in the North is the fact that the DUP has not embraced the Good Friday Agreement. We can only have a functioning system of power-sharing where we have parties that are open to power-sharing. We cannot indefinitely suspend the expectations of an entire society and tell people to wait and then wait some more while one party, the DUP, refuses to play ball. Those are the facts. Nobody regrets more than I the fact that the agreement in February was not taken over the line but responsibility for that rests at the feet of the DUP. Responsibility for the toxic relationship between the Tories and the DUP rests with Theresa May and Arlene Foster, respectively.
I agree with Deputy Martin when he says the North needs to be a priority for the Taoiseach, that the commitment needs to be strong and that the channels of communication need to be open, which is fair enough. However, frankly, I do not think it is fair and it is not dealing with the very challenging realities to play a game of make-believe and to say everybody is wrong in this scenario. The difficulty and the fault squarely lie with one party, and that party is the DUP. We need to try to resolve that but we can only do it if we are prepared to say that out loud and to challenge Arlene Foster in particular in that regard.
Can the Taoiseach tell us what he said to Chancellor Kurz on the issue of migration? Did he challenge him? Did he challenge his partners in government? As to our management of migration here, I think it has been fairly disastrous. One only needs to look to the system of direct provision to have proof positive that, far from managing migration, we are failing spectacularly in that regard.
I begin by congratulating the Taoiseach on organising a series of bilateral meetings through the summer and beyond. It is an important ongoing process and the right thing to do.
I spent the weekend before last at the British Labour Party conference. I met a variety of different groupings, including small firms' representatives and the representatives of very large businesses. Without exception, all of them outlined the negative impacts that Brexit will have on the economy and on employment in the United Kingdom. However, none of them knew how to articulate this without fear of being overwhelmed with criticism. That is the background music in the UK right now.
Much of the focus politically, and I think it will be the same at the Tory conference under way right now, is on what will happen next year in the final chapter leading up to the UK exit, for example, what will happen in Parliament and will there be a majority for this or for that? I continue to try to focus on the Irish backstop. If there is no agreed legal formulation for an Irish backstop, we will not get to a vote in the British Parliament in terms of a withdrawal agreement because there will not be one.
What is the Taoiseach's understanding of the date when the British Government will finally publish its legal understanding of what it politically agreed to in December of last year? We know it has dismissed the Barnier interpretation of that, and Barnier is going to have another go at it. We understand from repeated commitments that the British Government is going to set out its legal understanding. When will that happen? In the event of it not happening in advance of the October EU summit, that is, in the event of the British not setting out their legal understanding of the backstop, what will be the Taoiseach's response?
I have two questions. Has the Taoiseach had any discussions with his European counterparts about the passing of the nation-state law in Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu? On top of the long list of apartheid and racist measures directed against the Arab and Palestinian population, the nation-state law is an explicitly racist and apartheid law which flies in the face of international law and the right of Arab and Palestinian people to national self-determination. I wonder if Europe intends to do anything at all, or to make any statement, about how repugnant and in breach of international law and rights this nation-state law is.
Was anything said about the shooting of migrants by Moroccan forces? To add to the atrocities being committed against desperate people fleeing the Mediterranean, this latest incident was pretty shocking.
In terms of the forthcoming EU summits, there is a regular summit in October and a regular summit in December, and there is the possibility of a special summit in November, if it is necessary. That has yet to be confirmed but we agreed there would be one if it is needed either to confirm an agreement or to study the fact that we do not yet have an agreement. Obviously, I would much prefer it if we could conclude the withdrawal agreement, including the Irish protocol and the political declaration on the new relationship, which are the three elements that go together and have to be agreed, at the October summit rather than having to have a special summit in November. I certainly would not want to wait until December but that is not something that is entirely under our control. The timeline obviously works back from the end of March, when the UK will leave the EU, and sufficient time has to be available for the UK Parliament and the European Parliament to ratify any agreement. I imagine that if they had to both Parliaments could do that quite quickly, but it would be far from ideal to have a situation where this was left to run on into November or December, or even into the new year. That would be most regrettable and I sincerely hope we are all able to avoid that. I think we would start to see a significant impact on confidence in our economies if it was allowed to run on that long, so I will do everything I can to make sure we have an agreement sooner rather than later.
In terms of integration and diversity, I disagree with Deputy McDonald's assessment.
I appreciate that there are plenty of issues and shortcomings, of which direct provision may be one, but one in six people in Ireland was not born here, which is very high relative to that in other countries. It is higher than the figure in Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. We have done much better on integration than those countries, largely because immigration has been diverse, rather than migrants coming mainly from one country. They have come here from other parts of Europe and all over the world. In addition, they are very well integrated into the labour market and, in fact, more likely to be working than the average Irish person and paying tax. In many areas, in particular the health service, they are holding up public services, as well as helping to bring investment from large companies to Ireland, whether by Facebook, Google or others. The other day I was at a very good project which was led by Deputy David Stanton but which also very much involved the private sector to encourage migrants who were not part of the labour market to become involved in it and overcome the barriers they were facing. A lot of good work is being done in these areas, albeit the case that it is never going to be perfect. No country can state it has achieved perfection in dealing with migration and integration, but we have done pretty well relative to other states, given, in particular, that one in six people in Ireland was not born here. This suddenly became a net inward migration country, when for decades there was outward migration. I am pleased and proud that during the deep recession when there was very high unemployment and living standards were falling, people did not turn to anti-immigration or racist politics in the way they have in other countries when times have been tough.
Shall I continue?
I am sorry, but we have to proceed to Question No. 4. I appeal to Members. If it takes too long to ask questions, we will not have time to get the answers, but I have very little control over it. I am in the hands of Members.
