Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with the Chairman and Senator Nash in welcoming Mr. Gilmore to the Chamber. I thank him for his attendance and for his paper which will be of much use to members. His contribution is informed by his wealth of experience as former Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and former Tánaiste. His very valuable insight is appreciated. His paper is interesting and challenging. It is a very good document which gives members much to ponder and will form a core section of our final report.

Does Mr. Gilmore think that the commonplace optimism, which I share, that we will achieve and maintain the common travel area and the free movement of people is grounded? Will we achieve that? In his paper, he acknowledges previous successful diplomatic efforts and the success of Irish diplomacy in this sphere. The issue of the free movement of people was noted in Mr. Barnier's remarks today and all the statements and pre-negotiation team documents. Does Mr. Gilmore think we will achieve it? The issue is critical to the area that Senator Nash and I represent and come from because it is estimated that approximately 30,000 journeys take place across the Border every day for trade, work, schools, hospitals, for kinship and so on and . That is especially so in Senator Nash's area between Newry and Dundalk, where 3,000 trips are made per day. That is a critical point. I refer to travel from east to west such as travel to London. That was discussed this morning in the context of air travel.

The free movement of goods is also critical. The former Taoiseach, Mr. Ahern, gave evidence to this committee that the UK would need an increase of 20% in trade with the Commonwealth to replace 5% of its free trade with the EU, bearing in mind that the Commonwealth is already trading with Europe and has its own trading arrangements. I am not aware of the source of the figures but they were part of Mr. Ahern's submission.

All things considered, is Mr. Gilmore hopeful that in the end a free trade arrangement will be achieved? In other words, would Mr. Gilmore be hopeful that we could ultimately avoid tariffs and customs specifically? How hopeful is Mr. Gilmore that that would be the ultimate result, and what does he think personally we will or will not achieve?

The corollary of that is from Mr. Gilmore's party's own documents, which is an interesting concept of the Brexit trade adjustment fund. The ideal would be that we have no customs or tariffs, but in the event of us not fully succeeding there, how does Mr. Gilmore see the trade adjustment fund correcting the problem? The margins in a lot of our agricultural goods and services, specifically in beef and milk, are so small that any diminution in their value would render those exports almost unviable. Apart from factory farming, much of the ordinary small farming would become totally unviable. Much of the mushroom industry has already been affected, so how would Mr. Gilmore see the fund working? The critical thing is who would finance and administer the fund. Does Mr. Gilmore see the fund being financed in general from Europe? If we could achieve something on that level it would have great implications for this country.

I wish Mr. Gilmore well in his relatively new international role, but given his domestic political experience he knows only too well that most of the jobs in my area are related to agriculture and food processing. If that sector were to be further threatened those jobs would go and would be very difficult to replace. It is therefore of critical importance that something is done for that area.

I would be grateful if Mr. Gilmore could address the movement of people, in the sense of whether or not he feels our optimism is grounded, and also the question of trade and tariffs. I greatly appreciate Mr. Gilmore's presence here and look forward to his responses.