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Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 March 2019

Tuesday, 5 March 2019

Questions (13, 14, 15, 16, 17)

Brendan Howlin

Question:

13. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent meeting with the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr. António Luís Santos da Costa. [9091/19]

View answer

Micheál Martin

Question:

14. Deputy Micheál Martin asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent meeting with the Portuguese Prime Minister; the issues that were discussed; and the officials who accompanied him on the visit. [9374/19]

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Eamon Ryan

Question:

15. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent meetings with the French Finance Minister. [10368/19]

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Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

16. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent meeting with the Portuguese Prime Minister. [10516/19]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

17. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent engagement with the Prime Minister of Portugal, Mr. António Costa. [10782/19]

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Oral answers (12 contributions)

I propose to takes Questions Nos. 13 to 17, inclusive, together.

I attach great importance to ongoing political engagement with our EU and international partners. I meet and speak regularly to my counterparts, bilaterally, at formal and informal meetings of the European Council and on the margins of international meetings such as the World Economic Forum which I attended earlier this year. Such engagement is crucial to ensure partners are fully aware of our positions on Brexit and other important EU issues and, more generally, further strengthen our relationships for the period ahead.

I had an informal engagement in Lisbon with the Prime Minister, António Costa, at his invitation, on the evening of 15 February. Our ambassador to Portugal joined us for the meeting. We discussed bilateral relations between our two countries, which are excellent, as well as the forthcoming European elections. We also exchanged views on a number of EU issues, including the latest developments related to Brexit and the political situation in the United Kingdom, as well as preparations at domestic and EU level in case the United Kingdom exits the European Union without a deal.

I again met Prime Minister Costa on the margins of the EU-Arab League summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on 24 and 25 February. I used the opportunity of the summit to also speak informally to Presidents Tusk and Juncker, as well the Prime Ministers of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Italy and the Czech Republic, the President of Cyprus and the Chancellor of Austria. As Deputies are aware, I had met more formally Presidents Tusk and Juncker and Michel Barnier and Guy Verhofstadt when I visited Brussels earlier that month.

I met Prime Minister May most recently on the margins of the EU-Arab League summit.

The French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, paid a courtesy call to me on 26 February, following his meeting with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, who joined us. We spoke about current EU issues, particularly Brexit. The Minister, Mr. Le Maire, reiterated France’s unwavering solidarity on the backstop and its firm view that the withdrawal agreement could not be renegotiated.

Most recently, on 4 March, I met Prime Minister Skvernelis of Lithuania in Dublin. We discussed the positive bilateral relations between Ireland and Lithuania and a range of EU agenda issues. I thanked him for Lithuania’s support for Ireland in the negotiations.

Other EU and international engagements are envisaged in the period ahead. I will be happy to inform the House of these engagements in due course.

During the informal engagement with the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr. Costa, did the Taoiseach have an opportunity to ask him how the Portuguese had managed to build an 875-bed hospital for under €400 million? The Portuguese are well known for being very good contractors. Given the pickle the Government has been in because of the extraordinary cost of the national children's hospital, did it occur to the Taoiseach to obtain some friendly advice from another European country on how to manage costs? The issue was underlined again this morning in one of the newspapers which reported that HSE internal documents from the estates department showed that as far back as last May the head of estates in the HSE had made it clear that the budget figures for the children's hospital would have to be available for inputting into the budget last October. That would be the normal practice with which I am familiar. Big capital budgets must be considered in the context of the overall budget. This makes a nonsense of what the Minister for Health has asserted, that the children's hospital budget had no bearing on the overall budget announced last autumn. It is simply not credible to most people who are experienced in how government works in this country.

The Deputy should stick to the allocated time.

When meeting the various Prime Ministers such as Mr. Costa, has the Taoiseach looked at capital projects in other countries and seen how those countries are controlling costs to favour their services and taxpayers?

Members must stick to the allocated time or the Taoiseach will not have time to reply.

Will the Taoiseach clarify what he means by an informal meeting with the Portuguese Prime Minister? What were the circumstances? Was the meeting organised in advance or did the Taoiseach happen to be in Portugal and just call in to see him? The media were not informed in advance and not brought along. It was published via a tweet afterwards, which caused some surprise at the time. Why was the meeting informal and not formal, given that the Taoiseach met other European leaders in a formal context?

The British Attorney General has been in ongoing contact with Dublin in the past month and it is now clear that tripartite negotiations are under way. On Saturday it was reported that Brussels would basically accept anything Dublin was willing to accept, but it was also stated there was a belief that the major stumbling block to agreeing to whatever was being discussed was the Taoiseach's fear that he might not be able to manage the politics of the situation. Of course, the Taoiseach will deny that anything of the sort is an issue. Will he explain to the House exactly what he has been discussing? "Clarification" and "reassurance" are fine words, but what do they mean in practice? Is the Taoiseach saying he is not willing to agree to anything that would give greater legal certainty to the United Kingdom's ability to leave the backstop - in an earlier reply he described the temporary nature of the backstop - or is he saying the backstop is intended to be temporary and that he is okay with reinforcing the fact that it will be temporary?

It appears that a committee of Tory backbenchers is receiving detailed legal briefings and will have a chance to review the text and the UK Attorney General's advice before the debate on 12 March. Is it the Taoiseach's intention to provide the same courtesy for this House? If he will be making legal claims at some stage about what was agreed to, it is important that he be up-front with this House also. What is he prepared to do to ensure Dáil Éireann will at least have the same level of access to the deal and its legal interpretation as the British Parliament?

Did the Taoiseach discuss with the Portuguese Prime Minister Portugal's model for dealing with illicit drugs? There are major parallels, historically and socially, between Portugal and Ireland in the sense that Portugal developed a big problem with illicit drugs at a similar time to this country in the 1980s. It was an enormous problem, with high rates of HIV, drug related crime, addiction and so forth. Portugal made the brave decision in 2001 to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit drugs and it has been a spectacular success. HIV and drug related crime rates have plummeted. The levels of addiction have not disappeared completely, but they have reduced dramatically and stabilised. I heard the Taoiseach say recently that he wanted to have a health led approach to dealing with the drug problem.

People Before Profit has long advocated for that approach. It is long overdue that we move in that direction because criminalisation has not worked. As shown in Portugal, decriminalisation and wrap around support policies can make a difference in dealing with this problem. Did the Taoiseach discuss that model and does he think it needs to be considered for this country because the way we have dealt with it up to now in terms of criminalisation has not worked?

In the end game of the Brexit saga a critical issue will be the stance of the Taoiseach and the Government in respect of what is acceptable as a final outcome. I did not understand the point Deputy Micheál Martin was trying to make in regard to the backstop. I am assuming he was not suggesting or encouraging that the Government might resile from the content of the backstop. If he was, I want to pour cold water on it. It is essential at this juncture that the Government does not blink and that it is not distracted or unnerved on any level. The backstop is the absolute bare minimum. Whereas legal assurances and words of comfort are one thing and might be entertained, nothing that in any way compromises what are the absolute bottom line requirements as per the current Irish protocol should be entertained for a second. There needs to be clarity around that. For what it is worth, I also think that the Taoiseach as Head of Government deserves and should expect the support of the Oireachtas in adopting and maintaining that stance.

The Taoiseach said he has not seen the form of reassurances that the British side might want. Has he had any indication as to what they will be putting on the table? I am sure, through his contacts, formal and informal, he must have some notion of how they are proposing to come at this.

I will allow the Taoiseach five minutes to respond.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. The informal meeting in Lisbon with Prime Minister, António Costa, was exactly that. We got to know each other a little over the years and I was there on a personal visit. I told him I was there and he invited me over to his residence for a glass of wine and a chat. I brought the ambassador with me and he brought one of his officials with him. That was about the size of it. I do not think there is any need for conspiracy theories on this one.

We did not have a chance to discuss hospital construction. I imagine construction costs are lower in Portugal. I imagine labour costs are lower as well and professional fees are less. I do not know if material costs are lower but they may well be. Generally, Governments and Government agencies examine capital programmes in other countries and try to learn from what they do well and what they do badly and vice versa. A lot of people examine our programmes too. By and large for the past ten years we have been successful in delivering a capital programme on time and on budget. This is true for the massive Irish Water investment programme, the school programme, which is really big, the primary care centres, the €300 million Luas cross-city project and the €500 million projects such as the M17 and M18 and Enniscorthy-New Ross. The vast majority of projects have come in broadly on time and on budget in the past ten years, the children's hospital being the notable exception.

There are examples of how it has gone wrong in other countries. Karolinksa hospital in Sweden will probably cost somewhere around €6 billion by the time it is finished. It is easily the most expensive hospital project in the world. We all know the problems that have arisen in Australia as well in terms of the parliamentary inquiries into the cost of the new hospital in Perth and the problems that have arisen in Adelaide. Those of us who are interested in aviation will know about Brandenburg Airport, a new airport for Berlin completed five years and not yet open. There is a lot to be learned from what other countries get right and what they get wrong. Unfortunately, big capital projects go wrong in all countries. We need to ensure, particularly when it comes to the new children's hospital, that we do not run into the problems around commissioning that other countries have had. We need to prepare now for that. I have seen examples of other children's hospitals built, which it took three years to commission when construction had finished. We cannot allow that to happen in Ireland. We need to plan for that now.

In terms of the Brexit negotiations, briefings are, of course, available to Opposition Leaders. We are happy to provide them. The position as of today is that we have no texts or draft texts to consider or get legal advice on. I am not entirely sure what MPs are looking at in London but we have no legal texts or draft legal texts to consider, to propose amendments to or to seek legal advice on. What happens a lot in London, as Deputies will be aware, is internal negotiations.

The UK Attorney General has been to Dublin and met our Attorney General. That is not internal negotiations.

They may be exchanging legal texts among themselves and getting advice from each other's lawyers but that does not mean that they have any status in terms of the real negotiations that are going on in Brussels.

In terms of drugs policy, we did not talk about it but I am aware of the decriminalisation model that was pursued in Portugal. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, under the Chairmanship of the now Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, Deputy Stanton, did an interesting report on the issue. There is no doubt in my mind that the Portuguese model has been successful in terms of harm reduction and not imposing criminal convictions on people for minor possession, thus keeping people who were found to be in possession of minor amounts of narcotics out of the criminal justice system and dealing with them in the health system, thereby ensuring that these people, who are mainly young people, do not get a criminal conviction which then causes problems for them for the rest of their lives in terms of getting employment, visas and so on. That seems to me to be a humane approach, although it is evident that drugs and narcotics are very available in Lisbon. They are sold openly on the streets and squares. People will probably tell me that is true of Dublin too but they seem to be more available there than they are in our cities so we would have to bear that in mind as part of any model that we may wish to consider. The issue of decriminalisation is being examined by a group headed up by Mr. Justice Garrett Sheehan and I look forward to seeing the report when it is done.

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