British-Irish Co-operation Dail Éireann — 2026-06-24 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central -----citizens of different countries are entitled to come to Ireland. If they get visas, they are entitled to meet and organise. We have a very good democracy here. In the international transparency index, by all measures, we score very highly because of our approach to these issues. That is generally a positive, and we should not try to undermine that either. I disagree with Deputy Coppinger's remarks on former Prime Minister Keir Starmer. I would not have agreed with all his views on Palestine and the Middle East, but I would not make the assertions and allegations that she has in respect of him. In response to Deputy McGreehan's question on research and education, the idea of an innovation partnership with the UK is one that we will next pursue for the next summit. We endeavour to try to bring industry and businesses together more, but the idea of an academic collaboration, which has an enterprise dimension to it around new ideas, products and services, is definitely something we could and will pursue to see if can put flesh and bone on that in preparation for next year's summit. Again, the combination of universities, companies and State agencies, like Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland, with their UK counterparts, is something that is very positive. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-24