Minister touches down in Korea... South Korea, that is
AT least one Irish politician is off to Korea!
Education Minister Richard Bruton flew out yesterday to South Korea, barely ten days after Independent Alliance leader Shane Ross called off a three-minister mission to North Korea planned by his colleague, John Halligan.
On his 31st foreign trip since his appointment to office in 2011, Mr Bruton will lead a six-day Enterprise Ireland education mission that will also take in Vietnam.
He is set to meet the South Korean prime minister Lee Nak-yon and education minister Kim Sang-kon.
He is expected to hear first-hand from the premier about Seoul’s concern that Irish Government ministers even contemplated a trip to North Korea in a time of heightened tensions when international sanctions have been tightened against Kim Jong-un’s Pyongyang regime.
The South Korean Embassy wrote to the Government to express official unhappiness after the story broke in the Irish Daily Mail that junior minister Mr Halligan had written to the North Korean Embassy in London, seeking permission for himself, Shane Ross and disability super-junior minister Finian McGrath to travel to the isolated and despotic state.
Mr Bruton will reassure his hosts that the North Korea trip is now off.
Meanwhile, junior minister John Halligan has said that politicians ‘have to be prepared to take criticism’ for the decisions that they make.
Responding to questions about handling criticism at an event in Waterford on Friday morning, he said: ‘I’m a politician and you have to be prepared to take criticism.’
Mr Halligan has come under fire in recent weeks over the plans to visit North Korea.
This was followed by controversy over remarks made to a woman who was awarded €7,500 by the Workplace Relations Commission for inappropriate questions asked of her by Mr Halligan during an interview. Mr Halligan has since offered to cover the cost of the WRC award. During the interview, he said: ‘I shouldn’t be asking you this… but, are you a married woman? Do you have children? How old are your children?’
Last week Minister Bruton spoke frankly about Minister Halligan’s ‘mistaken’ proposal of visiting North Korea, but added that the controversy was not a sackable offence. He said: ‘It is a very despotic regime, it has a really bad human rights record, it is actively pursuing threats to... South Korea. I think the idea was a mistaken idea. I think that has been acknowledged by the Independent Alliance... I think, clearly, North Korea is not the sort of State we should be seeking to support in any way.’
As for Mr Bruton’s educational endeavours in Seoul, he will witness the signing of three bilateral agreements between DIT and three South Korean centres of learning: Hanyang University, Kyungpook National University and Soongsil University. These will enable student and staff exchanges to Ireland over the next five years.
Mr Bruton is also set to meet Vietnam’s education minister, Phùng Xuân Nha.