Neale Richmond (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can confirm my phone is on aeroplane mode.

I appreciate the Vice-President's reassuring remarks about Brexit. Looking for possible solutions to the huge challenge it poses, what is the best forum to submit ideas and suggestions, not necessarily from parliamentarians either here or in the European Parliament, but from civic society - the business groups, the farming lobbies, the NGOs? How can they really address the many huge problems that we will be facing into, particularly on this island and in the cross-Border context?

As I said to the Vice-President's colleagues when they were here, a key concern is what comes after Brexit. Where can the European Union and the European ideal go after that? Europe has taken a battering over the past decade. It is vitally important that Europe stands up for itself and takes the fight to the eurosceptics, to the likes of Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage. It needs to say that this is something worth fighting for, this is something worthwhile and that the outdated notions and generalisations of an aloof Brussels are not true. It has to be done clearly, simply, and very aggressively. I ask for Mr. Timmerman's views on that.