Mr. John Callinan:

The point I would make is that, essentially, these arrangements are governed by the legal framework. I take the Deputy's points about the ECJ ruling. I have not had a chance to read it and other colleagues may have so I will respectfully reserve judgment on that as to what exactly it would mean. However, with regard to the Irish-UK issues and the Gibraltar one, the position is quite different in that the Irish Government approach in respect of the Northern Ireland situation essentially has been that the Good Friday Agreement governs the issue. There is no such framework governing the UK-Spanish situation on Gibraltar. That was the key difference between those two issues.

More generally, the Government did not seek specifically a veto in respect of it, but if we are talking about exercising a veto on the withdrawal, the net point is that we would end up with a worse situation because if we do not have a negotiated withdrawal, we have a hard exit. That is something to be avoided.

In terms of what the future trade negotiation would ultimately look like, the detail of that will determine the voting rules on it. Colleagues with more expertise on this might wish to add more detail, but that would be my sense of it.