James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Bruton who, as others have pointed out, has huge experience. I thank him for all his service to the country in all of the different roles that he has played, and indeed his service to the EU when he was ambassador to the US. He mentioned competitiveness. It is really important that we discuss that a bit further and address the issues that are affecting our competitiveness. Mr. Bruton has been very fair in showing that, overall, we are much better than the UK in terms of competitiveness but that there are areas such as legal costs where we are weaker, not just in terms of the fees charged but the duration of the process. I have seen deals fall asunder. People in America can close a house sale in two weeks, very often on the Internet. They come over here and are just flabbergasted at the amount of time it takes and they become very suspicious that something is awry. That is certainly something we have to look at.

Mr. Bruton mentioned the Good Friday Agreement, how there will clearly be implications for it and how it is going to sit within any deal done. It has to be respected as an international agreement.

I agree with Mr. Bruton entirely when he talks about the need for the EU to be dynamic, able to change and, therefore, able to bring in new rules, regulations and treaties. At the same time however, that cannot be done at the expense of minority views. Smaller countries such as ours must not be made to feel that we would be sidelined by a number of bigger countries who would make decisions without regard to our concerns. I am not saying that is the case, but it is a delicate balance to strike. I would warrant that Mr. Bruton would know more about that than anyone in this room.

I am absolutely delighted to hear Mr. Bruton talking about rules being enforced equally. I do not mind putting some comments on the record here. If one wants to set up a small food outlet in this country there are all sorts of rules and regulations imposed by the EU, yet I had an experience where I passed through France and Monaco and into Italy. I stopped in the third village down the coast for lunch. It was a lovely lunch and very reasonably priced. I thanked the staff and asked where the toilet was. I was told to go the train station as the restaurant did not have one. One just could not do that here. Mr. Bruton is absolutely right when he talks about the big things, but it is the little things that drive people mad as well. Enforcement does not seem to be equal across the EU. Let us call a spade a spade. As Mr. Bruton quite rightly implies, that is what undermines people's faith in Europe. In fairness, politicians in this country too are guilty of blaming the EU for things they do not like and then expecting people to have a love of the EU, when in fact much of what we heap blame on the EU for is our own fault, due to the way we have imposed and interpreted certain rules.

I really welcome Mr. Bruton's proposal to the House of Lords. It is really important that there would be some sort of heads-up arrangement before any legislation is passed so that it does not cause untoward or unintended consequences. It was really useful to hear him point out many of the problems. If we had any doubt about how a change in law can impact hugely on businesses, we should look at an amendment that was recently discussed in the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the Seanad and Dáil. It was an amendment to a Bill to allow for a further extension of a derogation for international companies under accountancy rules that apply here in Europe and accountancy rules that apply in the United States. The sums of money that it was going to cost companies ran to the hundreds of millions, purely because of a rule. In fairness to her, the Minister took immediate action and extended that so that companies can now relax, but the impact it was going to have was just astonishing.

That is going to be multiplied a thousand times over through the course of Brexit if great care is not taken. Mr. Bruton spoke about leaving open the possibility of revoking the decision. I imagine he will agree it is far too early to be making noise like that. As he has rightly demonstrated, the longer this goes on, the more people will realise what the impact of it is and understand the negative effects it will have. In such circumstances, the slightly gung ho approach that has been adopted might diminish and a different view on this matter might be taken in the UK.

I think we will find out this weekend, when we see what comes out of the meeting, just how effective the Government team has been in making Ireland's case. I would like to congratulate all of those involved because they have done an excellent job. As Mr. Bruton has pointed out, there are many problems and many opportunities in this context. As a country, we need to deal with the problems we know of, anticipate the problems we know about in part and be prepared for problems that have not been thrown up yet. We need to take every opportunity we can, including those highlighted by Mr. Bruton in his paper. I refer, for example, to the possibility of bringing the European Medicines Agency to Ireland, and to Dublin in particular. There are many opportunities in our capital city, especially in the area around the airport. There are many other opportunities out there for Ireland. Many countries, including Brazil, Russia, India and China, see Ireland as a wonderful place where they can access the EU market of almost 500 million people. That market will decrease when the UK leaves the Union. As Mr. Bruton has pointed out, many companies are based in the UK so that they can access the EU market. Obviously, that will change. I thank Mr. Bruton again and ask him to expand on how he envisages that the option of the UK revoking its decision might be retained. How would that work in real terms? Will Mr. Bruton set out the timelines within which that might happen?