Dr. Alasdair McDonnell:

I thank both Mr. O'Ceallaigh and Mr. Arnold for a succinct but nevertheless powerful presentation. I expected no less from either of them. I can get worried about various aspects of the economy. I get particularly worried about agriculture. While we mention the style of arrangements in Norway and Turkey, agriculture does not feature in either of those. To the best of my knowledge agriculture is left out and in the Norwegian case heavy duties are placed on agricultural produce. I know from some very capable people in the dairying industry that the dairying aspect of agriculture is most vulnerable in terms of the damage it will suffer. I was fascinated by some evidence that Dr. Mike Johnston of Dairy UK gave to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee.

I will touch on the comments that Mr. O'Ceallaigh has just made. The nub of all this is that it is ultimately threatening our settlement of 1998, the Good Friday Agreement. To my mind, the British have emotionally abandoned, stepped back or are trying to abandon that settlement, although they want to take the advantages of it. We removed Articles 2 and 3 from the Constitution in order to get a settlement and stability, but there is little or no acceptance on the part of the British or some elements of unionism that there is an Irish dimension in the North. In fact, they feel that we should all be Unionists from now on in their day-to-day attitudes. What do we do therefore? How does Mr. Arnold see us pulling together?

Margaret Ritchie, Mark Durkan and I are three fairly lonely individuals in the House of Commons trying to make a case among 650 MPs. There might be ten or 12 of those 650 who will listen attentively - I am talking about the English MPs. There is certainly an attentive audience in the Scottish Nationalists. How do we all pull on the same green jersey and make this thing work for all of us? If things become unstuck in the North - this is not a threat or a scare - and it becomes destabilised again, the whole island becomes destabilised. We do not need that, North or South, so how do we unite and find mechanisms? Others were talking about solutions but how do we get a cohesive strategy?

I have been most impressed by the evidence and discussion of the IIEA, this committee and others. To some extent each bit of it is like a jigsaw sitting in isolation until it is all put together. Some of us point to the Government concerning this big challenge. There is a lot the Government can do, but there are things the Government cannot do. We have to find a way of maximising the contribution that each of us can bring to this. If we do not get that strategy, backbone or spine right all the other work we do will be lost and we will not maximise its value. Perhaps that is too much of a tall order but I am looking here at Mr. O'Ceallaigh's previous career as one of our outstanding diplomats.

He has been around all of these places. We need such people to steer us by outlining how they would have tackled the problem 15 or 20 years ago. Many people are concerned about this matter. We do even have - perhaps they are not very outspoken - people from a Unionist background in the North who are concerned. They are very pro-remain yet find themselves isolated. For me, the magic of this issue is that it breaks away from the old sectarian divide and we have an opportunity to hold a new discussion with new terms on how we take the island of Ireland forward.