We are here because of the Presidency of the European Union. It is a great honour for Ireland to have the Presidency and to be in that position for the next six months. It also brings a lot of responsibility. From my perspective and the agriculture portfolio I hold, it is a critical time because we have the negotiations on the CAP budget. We see there are proposals to cut that budget considerably. That is something Ireland will have a key role in over the coming months. I hope we are able to bring about a situation where we recognise agriculture and European farmers are central to European security because food security is as important as any other aspect of security across the European Union. That is why the CAP budget needs to be restored and expanded and grown, if at all possible. That is exactly what we need to be doing. The Minister of State nodding in agreement, and we all need to work together to make that happen. We need to recognise that farmers in every part of the European Union contribute hugely not just to the wealth of the Union in regard to the food that they produce but also to the public good that they do and from an environmental perspective as well. That also needs to be borne in mind. We have a climate crisis across the world. We have certainly found some element of it in Ireland in the last couple of weeks. We have had record temperatures and I understand there are more record temperatures to come. We have had record storms and all of these things are having consequences. What we do with our land, how we farm and how we how we develop our agricultural systems will have an impact on that, but farmers cannot change and adapt unless adequate provision is put in place. In other words, they need to be paid for the public good they provide. That needs to be central to the CAP negotiations. I want to turn to one other aspect of it. Strength with unity is the motto of the Presidency. The previous speakers spoke about a previous Irish Presidency when German reunification was an issue. Irish reunification is something we all need to look to at the moment because a couple of miles from me in County Fermanagh people who voted to stay in it are now outside of the European Union because of Brexit. The region wanted to stay part of the European Union. We have an obligation to ensure that over this Presidency we work towards developing a critical mass of European nations to recognise that the reunification of Ireland is also something that would hugely benefit the European Union. We have a region which was part of the European Union before, which could immediately go back into the European Union if it became part of a unified Éire. That is something we need to work together to try to develop. We must work with people across this island, but also across all of Europe so that we can see what kind of funds and resources we can put in place to integrate two parts of this island which have been divided by an artificial border for far too long, so that they can come together and be part of a new united Ireland within the European Union.

Sentiment score: 0.19