Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the gentlemen for their presentations. The only aspect that is consistent when we navigate our way through this kind of process is that nothing is guaranteed or tangible about it and that there are many threats to the hard-fought-for and hard-won arrangements agreed between both parts of this island.

I want to make a couple of points. I endorse fully Michael Farrell's point about new communities and the right of people of ethnic minority who have made their homes in the North to avail of Irish citizenship, particularly if they are rearing their families here and contributing to life and peace on the island. That would be a positive move the Irish Government could take unilaterally or even as part of the negotiations on amending the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. It is something this committee, and these Houses, should consider in terms of lobbying with the Government. It would be useful to hear a broader concert start to emerge around that issue also.

If he does not mind me saying so, Professor Harvey outlined a raft of potential implications and threats in terms of the undermining of the existing arrangements through Europe but also through the bespoke arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement. I have a question that I have asked of other contributors to this committee to which, to be fair, the witnesses may not have the answer; there may not be an answer to it. The European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs recently published a report - if the witnesses have not seen it I can furnish them with the details - in which it stated that the Good Friday Agreement would be altered as a result of Brexit. That is the term it used. I wonder about the legal implications of that in terms of the British Government acting unilaterally around Brexit, which would then see the alteration of the Good Friday Agreement which, as we all know and has been said earlier, is an agreement between both Governments as co-guarantors.

Specifically, can a referendum on Brexit usurp, undermine or take precedence over the referendum that took place in this State in 1998 to endorse the Good Friday Agreement? Obviously, we need not get into the politics of the vote that existed in the EU referendum in the North and the desire to remain in the EU. I appreciate that it might be quite a new or even an unfair question but what the witnesses' views are on it?

The issue of the mechanisms of accountability was touched on. Given that we are facing into a fairly significant and major summit on Brexit at the weekend, what accountability mechanisms are open to the Irish Government in terms of protecting the status and primacy of the Good Friday Agreement?