Mr. Declan Fearon:

There are two fronts, one of which is to make the European decision makers aware of what this Border means to the community who live along it. For people who live further south or north, it is not an overly big deal but for those who live in the Border corridor, and I am sure there are many here today who do, there are huge implications. Linked to that is the massive change there has been in those areas since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It is a different place and we want that to continue. I am not so sure that people, and the decision makers in Europe, are as aware of that as they should be and especially after the events of recent days, it will be largely down to the Irish Government to make this point in Europe. I know it is a member of the 27 but it is very important that it get across the views of the people who live there and what it will mean to them and the fact that what is happening in Stormont at the moment is not going to help any of our people get these points across. I do not think they will be strongly made in Westminster. It is up to the Irish Government and the members of this committee to bring that to the decision makers in the Government and say this is what can happen.

At the Kilmainham event I explained to someone how bad this can get. Commissioner Hogan last week presented what is probably the default position, that the roads are closed again. I think back to a Saturday morning 35 years ago when they started to blow up the road alongside our house. That went on all day until there were 22 craters in it. That road was closed for over 30 years or more. In many cases our hinterland is defined by the parish. Of the parish I come from, Dromintee in South Armagh, 80% is in the North and 20% is in the South. I can well remember people coming to mass in the local chapel having to park their cars on the other side and walk or climb across the barriers to walk 500 yards to mass and cross again. Are we going back to that? Nobody has convinced us that we are not. The more I hear about a hard Border, especially now that Commissioner Hogan has said it, I wonder if that is the legacy we will leave our grandchildren. We have to stop this. I listened to Vince Cable yesterday talking about an all-Ireland economy. We have to push this argument because the alternative is unthinkable.