Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like other speakers, I welcome Mr. Dermot Ahern. We spent a long time around the same table dealing with many of the problems we face here today in a different context.

Two things occur to me. I do not know whether Mr. Ahern had the opportunity to see the contribution of his namesake, Mr. Bertie Ahern, to this committee recently. The latter suggested that, in addition to a common travel area, we should consider a common trading area recognising the special status of Northern Ireland. It occurs to me, and the point has been made by a number of contributors in this process, that if there is to be a new customs regime between the UK and the EU of a hard kind, it would probably make more sense to have it between the island of Ireland as a whole and Great Britain rather than along the Border. It appears that there is a very strong case to be made for regarding Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular as a special economic area. Senator Mark Daly mentioned that when Germany was divided, East German-West German relations were regarded as being inside rather than outside the Community under EU law up to the time of German reunification. There is a real opportunity for Ireland to come up with an imaginative and flexible approach to propose to our EU partners for agreement with the British. I think Northern Ireland will be extremely marginalised within the UK by the Brexit experience. The post-industrial base of Northern Ireland has been in decline, which has had a very significant effect on Protestant Unionist working-class people. Protestant Unionist farmers in Northern Ireland will now find themselves on the wrong side of a revised CAP regime if Tory instincts for cheap food policies are advanced. The fact that Northern Ireland's agriculture and milk production are so heavily integrated into Southern production is yet another reason we should take on board the idea of regarding Northern Ireland as a special exception to the normal incidences of being inside or outside the EU. I would be interested in hearing Mr. Ahern's view about the possibility of special economic rules for Ireland and whether he thinks the Irish Government should be coming up with these now, putting them on the table and making them part of the 27 states' negotiating agenda.