Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes decency does not pay because I let Senator Mark Daly go before me and he took my question. I am glad that the Acting Chairman let me in here, because I want to tease out the question of special status some more. I agree wholeheartedly with everything my colleague Senator McDowell said. Agriculture is my brief and I would like to get the opinions of the two agricultural representatives from the party and tease out the issue from an agricultural perspective. An all-island special status would be ideal in tourism, I cannot see any negatives there, and it would solve many of the agricultural problems, such as the cross-Border travel, milk, sheepmeat, cattle, pigs and so on. We are trying to come up with proposals, solutions and answers so I am playing devil's advocate here in trying to get to the root of things rather than being negative. On the bigger question of agriculture, the Twenty-six Counties cannot get any better status in its relations with the UK after Brexit than as matters stands at present under the European model. If, as a result of bargaining and horse trading, all-island special status meant that while the North remained in the UK, this meant there would be tariffs on their products going into the UK, how would the representatives feel about this? How would that work in the agricultural model? If that did not happen, how could the agricultural model work if beef from Belfast was going into the UK tariff-free while beef from Dublin went in with tariffs? I am not saying that it cannot work but it does not sound like something that would be very easily worked out. Ideally, we would love to wind back the clock and not have a Brexit. However the aspiration coming from here is for all-island status, but it requires a lot of thought. It is not something over which we would immediately jump up and down while saying, "fair play Mr. Barnier, you gave us all-island status, we are 90% there". It could be a step back in some ways because we would have to collectively go back to the drawing board to see how this would work. There would be ramifications. What are the witnesses thoughts on that especially from the agricultural perspective which is their brief?

It must be very frustrating without an assembly or a Parliament in Westminster, but prior to the assembly's dissolution and the election being called, what feedback were witnesses getting on the ground from their negotiations or from whatever work, of meetings and research they had had with those on the other side of the Border? As Senator McDowell said, anything the witnesses are saying pushes an open door here. We can only go on the public speeches by Theresa May but the witnesses are meeting people face to face, like-minded individuals and people in business who might share the same grievances or fears as themselves. What do they think is the feeling on the ground? They are strongly emphasising that the majority in Northern Ireland have voted to stay but unfortunately in democracy, it is the overall result, we cannot go on sectoral votes in present circumstances. I could argue that if all elections were based on the box in my little local village, I would be President of Ireland now. We have to take the overall result and unfortunately we are where we are. I would like to know what sense the witnesses are picking up in their face-to-face meetings on the other side of the Border. They will find nothing other than positive things here, we all share the one aspiration.