Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The issue being discussed is important. The Commission is subject to the Single Market also. It cannot decide that it will ignore the Single Market here because there is immediate provision for more influential countries and we have to kowtow to them. We do not. The Single Market stands and on that we will stand or fall. If we allow it to be established that particular circumstances might need a change in the Single Market, we should go back before Europe on that one again. The Single Market is sacrosanct.

If we allow any watering down of what it contains in any area, not just in the pharmaceutical area but any area, we are narrowing and going into a smaller circle where we are liable to end up in the same position as we started before the Single Market came, and that would not be a nice place to be.