asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the continuing work of the Stockholm Disarmament Conference and of any specific initiatives taken by the Irish delegation.

I would refer the Deputy to the reply given by the Minister of State at my Department to similar questions from the Deputy on 16 May of this year. I regret to say that there have been no major developments at the conference since then, even if discussion has become progressively more detailed on the various proposals before the conference, which were described in the reply of 16 May. No new proposals have been tabled since then.

The lack of progress at the conference in attributable not only to difficulties in reconciling the divergent approaches of Eastern and Western participating states, which were described in the Minister of State's reply of 16 May, but also to the difficult overall climate in East-West relations. One must hope that this climate will show some improvement following the recent meetings of Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko with President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz. It is to be hoped too that the readiness of Western participating states, including neutral and non-aligned countries, to initiate substantive negotiations at Stockholm on concrete measures to make military behaviour more open, and military intentions more calculable, will soon be matched by all participating states.

There are some hopes that the conference will, before the end of the year, adopt a working structure which could help real negotiations to get under way. This in itself would be a useful step, given the lack of significant progress to date.

The Irish delegation has not so far tabled specific proposals of its own, for the reasons set out in the reply of 16 May: First, because proposals already tabled by Western participants, including neutral and non-aligned states, cover much of what the first stage of the conference could hope to achieve and, if agreed, would represent considerable progress. Secondly, because the work of the conference is still at a largely exploratory stage. Whether the Irish delegation will in due course table proposals, alone or with others, will depend on how the work evolves when effective negotiations get under way.

Could the Minister outline the extent of the co-operation which has taken place between Ireland and other neutral countries at the Stockholm Disarmament Conference?

We keep in constant contact with the other neutral, non-aligned countries. We have not tabled motions in that regard, as I said, because of the so far exploratory nature of the conference. If we felt it appropriate to join in tabling such a resolution, if one could be drafted, we would certainly do so. Likewise, we try to keep in contact with our Ten partners to try to find a common position with them on our attitude to many of the resolutions which are tabled. The difficulty there, as the Deputy will appreciate, is that they tend to move more in a NATO bloc, all other nine member states being members of NATO. There could not then be a common Ten approach for the reason that we are not a member of the Ten and we would have to avoid that. We tend to keep in touch with both groups, the Nine who are also members of the Ten and the neutral non-aligned countries, without being members of either. Our concern would be to ensure that the conference keeps moving in the right direction towards more transparency and more confidence-building motions in Europe, ultimately with the objective of building up some element of trust between the super-powers which would allow them to get around the table and have much more substantive and very much more important and real disarmament talks in the future.

Would the Minister agree that Ireland ought to be playing a more active and distinctive role at the conference and bringing forward initiatives of its own?

That keeps on being said, but the people who say it rarely follow up with suggestions of what Ireland could be doing, except to say that we should not get into this or that bloc and that we should put down proposals. As long as we can influence people towards putting down proposals that is a very useful, important and constructive role. We can, if necessary, and certainly do not exclude doing so in the future, put down a motion of our own. However, at this stage our approach should be to try to influence other motions which are going down.