Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

B'fhéidir go tosnóidh mé, más féidir. This is probably the biggest decision made affecting the island of Ireland for 30 to 40 years since our entry to the European Economic Community, as was the European Union. It is a decision into which we had no real input except for influencing people in Europe. I suppose we do not have a good record of that in this country, considering what happened with the banking crisis.

As mentioned earlier, it also guts the Good Friday Agreement and that nascent all-Ireland economy which had started to develop over recent years. It creates a man-made barrier to the movement of people, goods and services. In a way the Border is already a man-made periphery. It has the effect of creating peripheries where none should exist. This will accentuate this periphery in a big way.

I remember a couple of years ago, we did work with the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Association, NIIRTA, and Retail Excellence Ireland. In one sector of enterprise, what they called "tourism shopping", where people were coming to the island of Ireland and going to the two different jurisdictions, they reckoned there was a potential increase of around €700 million. Opportunities like that, which were just waiting for the right development, are now off the table with these changes.

If the UK decides to include the North of Ireland in these changes to the movement of people, it will be detrimental to people travelling across the Border. An example might be people from Poland or Latvia who moved to Ireland and decide to move North but are prevented from so doing. The only solution to that scenario would be if the movement of people Border was moved to the Irish Sea. In other words, people from the island of Ireland moving to Britain would be subject to the checks Britain believes necessary with regard to the control of immigrants, etc. What do the representatives from Border Communities against Brexit and ISME think?