Mr. Peter Sheridan:

To be clear, I was not suggesting that the Swiss and German border is a model to follow. There are about 54,000 people who commute across that border every day without having to show any identification. If one travels across it, one can only bring back two bottles of wine. Any goods that one buys in one country have to be declared on the way out again. I am not for a minute suggesting we take that route and that we start declaring goods again when we move between North and South. I completely agree with the Deputy and I said in my opening remarks that the need to continue to build relationships will be critical.

By coincidence, on the day of the referendum result, the annual general meeting of Co-operation Ireland was held in the premises of ConnectIreland. All board members who were there, even those who had voted to leave the EU, were adamant the organisation needed to continue to build informal relationships as formal ones are withdrawn. We need to upscale what we are doing, for example, among teachers and councils. Whatever it is, we need to continue to build those relationships. The Deputy is right about complacency. Neither the EU, the UK Government nor any of us here want a conflict on the Border again. It is easy to dismiss it and say it will never happen, but as I pointed out earlier, it is still a fragile peace process. There are already protests along the Border. The history of the place is that protests can become much more dangerous as this goes on which is why I raised the issue of identity and people feeling their identity is being threatened or compromised. We need to be careful of those things and not be complacent about them. I do not want to overstate that there will be some sort of conflict arising but we have to be aware it is not that long ago we were in conflict over many of these issues. The first shots that were fired were fired at Border checkpoints. We have to be careful we do not put anything in place that creates the issue of identity for people again.