I would like to thank the Taoiseach for the gracious hospitality, for the partnership in all that Canada and Ireland are building together. And, dear Micheàl, thank you for welcoming me back home. It is good to be home.

It is a true pleasure to return to Dublin and an honour to be the first Canadian Prime Minister in a decade to be making an official visit here. I look forward to visiting Trinity College later this afternoon, one of the world's leading universities across the humanities, literature, arts, sciences and of course I'm looking forward to visiting County Mayo tomorrow, Aughagower, the place that made my family.

Today though, this afternoon is about work, but it's good work, it's positive work. It's about strengthening the relationship that is already flourishing. Flourishing through people, four and a half million Canadians of Irish ancestry, 200,000 Canadians who travel here every year. It's a relationship that's flourishing through commerce, with more Canadian businesses such as Shopify, PressReader Cleo choosing Ireland as the base for their European operation. Flourishing through the tens of thousands of workers that Canadians and Irish companies are employing in each other's companies, flourishing through investment from our major pension plans, flourishing through trade which has already increased 150% over the past decade, far outpacing the serious increase that's happened as well between Canada and the European Union. And Taoiseach, I would just like to underscore how pleased we are that you're moving forward with the full ratification of CETA with the amendments to the Arbitration Act now passed through Oireachtas, and I know that was important work and we're very grateful that that has been accomplished.

Now, all of that said, with all of that flourishing movement, you might suggest maybe we should just leave well enough alone, keep it going. But there's much more that we can do together. An analysis led by the Government of Ireland suggests that across 13 sectors from finance to air transport that through deeper cooperation we can add an additional $2 billion a year in bilateral trade. More opportunity, more prosperity, more resilience in that uncertain world. And so to help deliver on that today, we're advancing our bilateral relationship across key sectors. We're harnessing complementary strengths to reinforce our sovereignty and deliver benefits for our people from artificial intelligence to pharma to biotech and food security.

We have complementary strategies in artificial intelligence. The Digital Ireland Strategy and Canada's AI for all strategies, ways to harness the AI revolution but to put people at the centre of that transformation. And the delivery in that partnership is almost immediate. In fact, some of it has already begun. OpenText, Canadian company, has announced yesterday their investment of more than $100 million in Cork to establish their European hub for AI in partnership with Ireland's IDA.

In pharma and biotechnology, Canada and Ireland will cooperate and expand our cooperation in life sciences including skills development for students and more resources for our researchers. Our leading training hubs will work together to ensure our workers have the right tools, technologies and expertise they need. Canada will work to open a regenerative medicine hub right here in Ireland and partnering with the expertise here and we'll deepen coordination between our governments in building pharma supply chains to improve access for our citizens of the medicines that they need.

On food security, it's the third pillar that the Taoiseach and I were determined to have in. We've tasked our officials with finding new ways to build shared resilience, better protecting families from external shocks such as the terrible disruptions we've seen from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. We want to put citizens back in control and leverage our strengths there.

Now in parallel to our deepening relationship bilaterally, Canada is also working to deepen our partnership with the European Union, particularly during Ireland's upcoming presidency of the Council of the EU. We fully support your priorities for your presidency. First, increasing competitiveness, simplifying processes, deepening investment, diversifying trade, focus on strategic sectors and resilience. Bolstering security with continued support of the EU for Ukraine, strengthening the defence and security industrial base and finally and foundationally, upholding the values of the rule of law and democracy, indispensable to the foundation of the EU but also indispensable foundational to our partnership between Canada and Ireland.

The new world order will be built from Europe. Canada is the most European of the non-European countries, and we are transforming our cooperation with the European Union. Last June, we entered into a new partnership that has strengthened our cooperation on climate, technology, and trade. In February, Canada became the first non-European member of SAFE, the defence procurement initiative. We have already established more than 50 partnerships in the critical minerals sector across more than 10 countries in Europe. In a more dangerous and divided world, Canada is choosing to build and work in partnership with Europe.

Finally, as the Taoiseach mentioned, next year marks 180 years since the first wave of Irish immigration to Canada. A wave that was triggered by the famine which devastated this country and whose memory instils the values of compassion and solidarity with the most vulnerable in our society, and Ireland leadership the most vulnerable around the world. These are values that we are reaffirming which are also values and history we're celebrating. And we will celebrate the 180^th anniversary.