Yes. It was a blatant attack on people, businesses and houses. It was quite shocking. There was a trauma visited upon children and a sense of insecurity and of fear. It is designed, in line with Mr. Smotrich's comments, to force people out and to create terror. I am in no doubt about that. We have to work with other countries to try to really escalate the international response to this.

The forthcoming visit of President Biden will be an historic occasion for Ireland. It will be a significant event, celebrating the strong ties between the people of Ireland and the people of the United States. We all know that the President has for a long time been a great friend of Ireland; in fact, he wears this on his sleeve and does not hide his Irishness or his background. President Biden has, over many decades, been a very active supporter of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. The engagement of …

Yes, there will be lots of new claims as well. Of course, he is probably the best quoter of Irish poetry at any international forum. I have had the pleasure of attending a number of summits of EU Council meetings and meetings between Europe and NATO and so on where his introduction would be a quotation from an Irish poet. I was the Taoiseach at the time. President Biden would say that I was used to him quoting Irish poets, not because they are Irish but "because they're the best poets". He has been a great advocate…

In the first instance, I have held the consistent view that once elections have been held all political parties that participated in any election should immediately form a Parliament and create an Executive. This is the democratic thing to do. That has always been my view, irrespective of issues around Brexit and the protocol. President Biden has been very positive about that issue and very firm in underpinning the Good Friday Agreement and that there would be no hard border on the island of Ireland. The visit is n…

The US Administration has been briefed on the legacy issue. I was in Washington four weeks ago and I met the national security advisor, Mr. Jake Sullivan, and a number of key officials in the State Department with regard to the European and Irish question. I briefed them on our concerns around the legacy Bill, our opposition to the legacy Bill especially in the context of it not being in compliance with Article 2, and the general degree to which, in our view, it undermines human rights more generally but also human…

Addressing the status of undocumented Irish citizens in the United States remains a priority for the Government and is raised on an ongoing basis in our engagements with the Administration and political leaders in the United States. The Taoiseach raised immigration matters directly with President Biden during his visit to the White House on St. Patrick's Day. I also discussed immigration extensively in meetings with Members of Congress during my most recent visit to Washington D.C. last month and over the last week…

We have done so.

No, we took an initiative last year whereby we had an amnesty. That was regularising people.

The Deputy said we had not regularised people.

We took a very significant initiative at the early stages of this Government to regularise the situation for people who were here for a considerable length of time. The result of that is that thousands of people are legally resident who were in various centres and so on. We are consistently endeavouring to get housing for them and over time, they work with the local authorities. There has to be balance in migration policy. Our strategy within the US, where some people are undocumented for between 14 and 20 years, i…

There has to be a balance with migration policy. We are in a situation now, because we are in the European Union, where there is complete mobility among the 27 member states that are home to close to 450 million people. That mobility actually extends beyond the EU and includes the European Economic Area, EEA, countries as well. We allocated 40,000 work permits last year and we had the regularisation scheme before that. There are limits in terms of sustainable and manageable levels of migration. People can apply for…

They are not valid at all because there are Irish people undocumented in the US for 25 years and more.

There was a very significant amnesty scheme announced so I am not clear why they would not have been regularised in the context of that scheme.

First, I would like to highlight the positive position of the passport service. It is successfully meeting the current high demand. All turnaround times are at their target level and there are no backlogs. Over 230,000 passports have been issued in the first three months of 2023. I have fully supported the provision of an online portal for passport queries from MLAs from the Northern Ireland Assembly and am pleased to confirm that this has been developed and will be launched shortly. The portal will facilitate MLAs…

As I said, we are confirming that it will be launched shortly. The word "shortly" is a very beloved word.

However, it will be shortly. I am positive about that aspect of it. Only recently it was extended to MEPs, who did not have access to it, but I decided to give a small number of them access as well. MLAs will now get access. I do not have information about the specific week or whenever we will have it. However, it will be happening shortly and it is ready to go. As I said earlier, 90% of applicants last year applied through passport online and that figure will continue to grow as the passport service's digital firs…

The evidence so far this year in terms of the response is good; 100% of people are getting callbacks and 230,000, which was the figure I gave earlier, have already been processed in three months. It is a good service and it is working well. Regarding MPs, I did not realise that Sinn Féin's MPs were that anxious to exercise their mandate. I know they ran for election but they do not take their seats. I remember they were-----

Sinn Féin's members were conspicuously absent during the Brexit debate-----

-----and it would have been very helpful if we had had more Irish voices at the time arguing about Brexit.

I am glad the Deputy has given Members of my party credit for Irish independence. I appreciate that. That is a bit different from the normal narrative that comes.