Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As my colleague, Deputy Smith, pointed out, the difficulty about the Dutch Parliament's understanding of our position is that it is not unique. I understand from meetings Fianna Fáil members had with some of the Sicilian and Italian parliamentarians that they thought Ireland is leaving the EU because Northern Ireland is leaving. This is the challenge we face. Malta had some understanding but, in reality, it requires a lot of education because there is so much going on and so much information-sharing and laying out of our position. One of the big challenges the Government faces is that while Theresa May has made her statement, we need to set out our asks and say what we want. Deputy Sherlock pointed out the votes that took place in Westminster. What is being said by the British Government and what it is doing are two entirely different things. Theresa May when she was Home Secretary said the hard Border would of course return if there were a Brexit. Then she became Prime Minister and said there would of course be no return to a hard Border. Now she says the Border will be as frictionless as possible. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Brokenshire, says there will be no special deal for Northern Ireland. The lack of understanding in Westminster could be put in the following way. While Westminster was trying to emphasise the importance of Northern Ireland in terms of the impact of Brexit, one of its reports which the House of Lords produced stated that - I thought it was a very telling line - the relationship between Ireland and Britain has not always been a smooth one. This would have to be the greatest understatement of any diplomat in the history of the State. The report's analysis of the impact was such that its authors dismissed everything that would suit us and would do everything to suit themselves. The UK currently has an operation called Operation Gull whereby people leaving Belfast, Derry and Larne are profiled and 752 people have been arrested on immigration grounds.

It already has immigration controls between the North of Ireland and Britain. That is the solution to not having a hard Border. It has to accept that when 40,000 people were employed in the security forces in the North, the Border could not be secured. Trying to secure it now would be foolhardy, whereas it is already carrying out immigration controls at the three exit points from Northern Ireland to Britain. Yet, it will not reimpose that. The House of Lords has said that it cannot be done for political reasons, even though exactly the same system was in place between 1939 and 1952 and, under it, identify checks were carried out on people travelling from the North to Britain.

I commend the great work done by the Minister in respect of funding. I do not think it was highlighted enough. Many of the organisations would not be aware that a lot of safeguards have been put in place. In essence, this goes back to the strategy and statement of the Government, in that we have to be quite forthright and say that Britain voted to leave the EU and Northern Ireland did not. Any loss of funding to the INTERREG and PEACE programmes will have to be made up by the British taxpayer post-Brexit, not from 2020 but from here on, because the peace process is that important. If there is not funding going into east Belfast and youths are no longer engaged in youth projects and looked after by the funding from the PEACE and INTERREG programmes, things will destabilise over time. That is how fellows would become indoctrinated. There would be a slow return to violence and, unfortunately, the economy would disintegrate, as much of the evidence shows. When I say EU funding, I just mean INTERREG. The British taxpayer should pay for that because Northern Ireland did not vote to leave the EU and, therefore, should not suffer. I accept, however, that many farmers there voted for Brexit. Again, the British taxpayer should see to it that those EU programmes continue. Otherwise, it will destabilise the economy and, in turn, the peace process.

Colleagues spoke about innovative programmes in terms of what we want and what we should be putting forward in our statement. Part of what we need to look at is trade quotas between the North and the South and between Britain and Ireland. Europe is very good at coming up with innovative language in order to facilitate such processes. We had an Anglo-Irish trade agreement back in the 1960s for beef and other produce. We have to examine that. There is an argument that if we have a hard Border between the North and the South, somebody would make money by smuggling people. It is an anti-criminal measure as well. We do not want to have these border checks because if we do, someone will make money getting around them. It is the same with customs checks. People will make money by getting around them. If there is a trade quota, there is then some chance of saying that we can continue to trade. Obviously, east-west trade is very important to us.

An issue that is arising in correspondence is analytics. Brexit is a huge project for Ireland. There are so many areas affected. I made a point on that at the previous meeting. Even within Leinster House, pretty much every committee is dealing with Brexit. From this committee's point of view, not all of them are going to include something to do with the North in their final report, even though it affects every committee. What is happening is just an exercise in ticking the box. The Government should say that every committee and Department must analyse how this is going affect the North. Everything affects the North, even down to fishing. What are we going to do with the Naval Service? How are we going to patrol European waters when Britain leaves? The best of brains must carry out analytics to assist the Government from the outside and to structure things to ensure that every issue the Government wants to address for Ireland is addressed. That includes reaching out to the Italians and the people of Malta to say that we are not leaving the EU. We must lay out our five or ten key issues.

In the event of Britain breaching elements of the Good Friday Agreement, there are opportunities to deal with that. We have signed up to the International Court of Justice. For some reason, however, the only country that does not come under that is Britain and the North. We can take every other country to the International Court of Justice for a breach of an agreement that we have with them or for any grievance we have with them. The only country we cannot take to court is Britain. When it comes to a breach of the Good Friday Agreement, there is no mechanism to adjudicate between the two sides. Even the European Union has pointed out that there appears to be a breach of the Good Friday Agreement. Now we have no body to decide upon it. The Government might need to look at that case for the North and Britain to be brought under the remit of the International Court of Justice.

I thank the Minister for coming before the committee and for outlining all of the stuff he has been doing in the background on this. It is a huge challenge for the Government and for the country just to understand the scope of it. Every time one thinks of a problem, there is another underneath it. If we listed out all of the problems, we could then start to address them. However, I do not think that we have one document that has everything on it. That is the start upon which we can base policy.