Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the contributors for their considered papers. A couple of points occurred to me. Mention was made of the possibility of immigration controls coming in the wake of Brexit. It seems to me that the United Kingdom does not propose to impose a hard border in terms of immigration controls. It seems that the United Kingdom intends to control immigration by internal controls on access to labour markets, housing, welfare, social services and the like and that it proposes to maintain visa-free travel for EU citizens to the UK. If that is the case, there will not be such a huge problem from the Irish point of view because people will be able to get off the Eurostar in Euston station, Paddington station or wherever it arrives, show their passport and walk on in exactly the same way as they do at the moment. That is one point. I do not think we should get too concerned about immigration controls because I do not believe the British Government intends, as regards EU citizens, to introduce any new form of visa-type requirements for permission to enter the United Kingdom.

My second point is that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has a double application. It applies to the institutions of the European Union in all of their activities and to member states when they are administering EU law. If Brexit takes place and Britain eventually leaves, one would imagine the first of those legs falls away completely. There is a subtlety to the second leg on its application to the member state when administering EU law. One could say that at the moment, it is incorporated by treaty, and the UK Parliament has ratified those treaties, into all EU law and will be preserved as part of the acquis being transferred into domestic law. If one likes, the spirit of the fundamental rights will come with it as an interpretative guide. That is one way of looking at it but it very much depends on how the Westminster Parliament decides to transpose EU law, obligations and rights into domestic law. Will it expressly preserve the charter's influence as to how they should be interpreted or will it sweep it away?

This will be my last point. I was listening to a BBC radio programme and it seems that on this occasion the Conservative Party will not make a part of its manifesto a proposal to scrap the European Convention on Human Rights in its entirety even though it is clearly a long-term aim of the party. There is the possibility, which I think is more than a possibility but a real likelihood, that the UK Parliament will not just simply repeal the Act relating to the European Convention on Human Rights but will come up with its own Bill of Rights. Whether it is a UK Bill of Rights, a British Bill of Rights or an English Bill of Rights or whether the European Convention on Human Rights' application to Scotland, which is internalised into the law of Scotland at the moment, will continue or whether there will be a different approach to Northern Ireland are things we definitely need to consider. I agree that the fundamental rights aspects of the Good Friday Agreement are thrown into question by the simple ending of the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the question mark over the future applicability of the European Convention on Human Rights. Given, as Mr. Farrell stated, that the European Convention on Human Rights provisions of the Good Friday Agreement were supposed to spur us on to greater things, it would be an irony indeed if it ended up that the wording of the agreement required Britain to equate its fundamental rights to the Irish fundamental rights provisions in Northern Ireland. However, that is an irony of the situation.