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

I welcome Professor Todd and thank her for her paper. She points out a number of things that we have expressed concerns about previously. First, and most important, if it proceeded as indicated and if Britain were to leave the Union, we would have a diminution of North-South contacts and, at very best, obstacles would appear in the contacts that have already been set up, such as Waterways Ireland, the language body and the various crossover points and areas of co-operation that have become commonplace, with discussions on a regular basis both at parliamentary and institutional level. That is something we do not want in either in a North-South context or in an Ireland-Britain context. While it has been said to us in the past that Ireland and Britain can arrange to have an ongoing satisfactory relationship because we had that before and we had an Anglo-Irish trade agreement and so on back in the old days, we tend to forget that we are no longer in the old days. Time has moved on and there are new challenges. In the modern era there are different challenges altogether, which require a degree of co-operation to which we have now become accustomed. After the difficult years of the crisis in Northern Ireland, politics has again emerged and is seen to take centre stage. Many of us remember the criticism that politics had failed in Northern Ireland. Of course, it had, and it was replaced by something else. People now see new obstacles presenting themselves through the fora that have already been put in place, the points of contact that have become commonplace and on which both sides now rely to a great extent.

As a result of those new obstacles, how does Professor Todd feel we can counteract those negative aspects in the worst-case scenario? I do not accept that we should pretend it is not going to happen. It is like Murphy's law: if these things can happen, they do happen. Alongside the things I have often said before and which we have discussed here before, there is a tendency across Europe at present, which is very unnerving, to feel that Europe has failed and that the European concept is not what it was thought to be. It was much better than any concept that went before it and it has shown over the last 50 years that it was better, is better and will continue to be better if it is nurtured and allowed to continue.

What institutions can replace the potential exit of Britain? How do we get over the obstacles that will appear - the border obstacles, for example, the logistics of the new entity and the entities involved in relations between Ireland and Britain, between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and between Ireland and Britain together and the rest of the European Union? Do not let us forget that European history will tell us there is a tendency to go back to where we were. That has always been a fault in Europe. Whenever Europe went back to where it was, it was a catastrophe. There is a danger that kind of thing could happen again. Unfortunately, I see that kind of outcome if the current tangent towards the undermining of Europe from within continues.