I was very surprised last weekend at the tone of the editorial of the UK edition of The Sun, which talked about Ireland's "naive young prime minister" and advised him, "shut your gob and grow up." This is offensive and very damaging to UK-Ireland relations. The Taoiseach has every right to speak on behalf of Irish citizens, and on behalf of UK citizens in Northern Ireland.

It will not be in The Irish Sun. You can bet your boots on that.

Absolutely. As I have said before, the UK has shot itself in our foot and we must work extremely hard to ensure comments like this are not tolerated. I have heard from people in the UK that people in the Republic of Ireland will have no choice but to follow the UK out of the EU. I remind them that we are committed members of the EU. There has to be parity of esteem between Ireland and the UK and such comments must be condemned. Today, the DUP and Sinn Féin are having meetings in Downing Street and I hope they are a success. Brexit has caused huge complexities in Northern Ireland and huge trouble on the island of Ireland, as well as between Ireland and the UK. The editorial of The Sun is offensive and is not helpful to UK-Ireland relations.

I wish to refer to a meeting of the General Affairs Council in Brussels yesterday when unfortunately Ireland lost out to Paris in the decision on the relocation of the European Banking Authority with 167 staff from London, arising from the United Kingdom's decision to exit the European Union in March 2019. It was a great achievement on the part of all those concerned for us to go ahead of Frankfurt - which the agency would consider would be its natural home - to tie with Paris with 13 votes each, with one spoilt vote who decided to vote for each candidate, which was very generous but it was not much good to us. I am sure many Members when canvassing say they will vote for all the candidates and they put 1, 1, 1, against the names-----

I knew the Senator did that for me.

No, I did not. I will say no more.

The drawing of lots does not seem a fair way to decide the fate of those 167 staff. Luck was not with us on the day. We did not have the luck of the Irish or the four-leaved clover in Brussels yesterday. The benefits to Ireland, which would have accrued, would have been enormous in attracting financial services from London, but we must still pursue that objective, irrespective of the decision. We must pursue the financial services to locate in Ireland because we have the best location in terms of language and our location with respect to the United States and the rest of Europe.

I want to compliment the efforts of the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, the Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs, Deputy Helen McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Michael D'Arcy, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and the Irish diplomats in Brussels and throughout the European Union for a magnificent effort by our team. The strategy of withdrawing from the bid to win the relocation of the European Medicines Agency with a staff of 900 staff from London to Dublin was probably the right decision, which strengthened our case for the European Banking Authority. When I heard the outcome yesterday I was tempted to quote from Oscar Wilde's play, "The Importance of Being Earnest", but I decided in the circumstances, taking account of all the work that went into this, that it would be inappropriate to say, "To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both ..." and I will not mention the following words of the quote, other than to say that it does not apply in this case----

The Senator said it anyway.

The Senator is such an amateur.

-----because carelessness was not the part of the role played; carelessness was not involved. Every effort was made and our diplomats throughout the world deserve credit. We fought them all and we won, and the Minister and the Taoiseach-----

The Senator already mentioned the Ministers.

We won when we were up against the strength of Frankfurt. In the circumstances all we can do is say we did not pull the winner on the day, it did not come out of the bag for us. There was a drawing of lots but that is not the way to do this. We should intensify our efforts now to attract banks from the United Kingdom to Ireland. As Senator Feighan said, they tried to shoot us in the foot when they decided to vote for Brexit.