Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

Border Counties: Discussion

2:10 pm

Mr. John James O'Hara:

I will answer one point. The reality is the North did not vote for Brexit. Some 470,000 did not vote for Brexit. They wanted to remain in Europe. The reality is one should respect the remain vote. These are people on the ground every day. They want to be able to travel nice and free through both jurisdictions. To clarify something, the Six Counties did not vote for Brexit. If we have a border, it should be on the Irish Sea. It should not be any place within Ireland.

There has been a lot of work done over the past three years for an all-island beef food product label between both councils. As a tourism product, Ireland has to be sold as one product. It cannot be sold as two separate food products in any respect from any different part of it. Let us look forward and say that Ireland is a small island in a big wide world. As we are marketing tourism - here is a distinct point we came across - we are setting up agents through the United States as a tour company. We went across different parts of the United States and they did not know where Ireland was. The reality is this is a small island and to be cut in two is not an option. It is something that we need to move forward. We need to bring both communities together to try and bring that forward.

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