Mr. Damian McGenity:

I thank the Senators for their support and their comments. On the overall remarks on special status, I wish we had the answers. It would short-circuit the enormous problems of Brexit. I want to pick up on Senator McDowell's point on potentially having separate deals for separate sectors. While there may be traction in that, one potential stumbling block is that the diverse nature of business and of European law and rules on a variety of sectors. It may be possible to get a deal in the agriculture and the agrifood sector, and that would have further implications for getting product into the UK market, as Senator Daly said, because Europe does not allow countries to do individual trade deals. In pharmaceuticals, for example, Almac gave evidence to the Northern Ireland select affairs committee in February. It is a big employer in Portadown and has its European headquarters there. It is at the very top end of medicine and much of what it does is research and drug trials. It said in its evidence that it had bought a facility in Dundalk, that Europe requires that the medicines are tested in a laboratory by a competent person, within the European Union. Look at pharmaceuticals or, as the Senator said, the aircraft and other sectors. For instance, I spoke to an engineer and quantity surveyor last week. He is a neighbour of mine in the North and does a lot of work in Dublin. The construction industry is beginning to realise that to buy product from the North in the UK which has a CE certificate, when that is brought here to the South, he, as an engineer, will not be able to sign off on that project because that component does not have a certification. The answer is not simple.

There is a great lack of dialogue on Brexit. Unfortunately, there is no assembly now sitting in Belfast and those institutions need to be put back in place. In the absence of constructive dialogue and of a strand that we would like to see developed between London, Dublin and Belfast on the way in which these problems can be teased out, the way in which solutions can be put forward and on how people can engage in that discussion, we fear a solution will be imposed on us that could be very unworkable. Overall, we would like to have such a dialogue. The Irish Government has done an enormous amount of work. Its Brexit document is very good. The Minister with responsibility for European Affairs attended the General Affairs Council meeting on Monday. However, the deeper discussion required on what the solution to Brexit is and the feeding of that into the process is not taking place across all the political parties and the non-governmental organisations.

The feedback we have got on the ground, and Mr. John Sheridan will comment on this from the farming sector, and I also farm part-time, is that people are now beginning to wake up. This is only two years away. Representatives of the Ulster Farmers Union, UFU, appeared before the Seanad committee recently and they sat on the fence in terms of Brexit. My view and that of the Border Communities Against Brexit is that those in the farming sector were told that Brexit would be good for them and that they would be able to get deals on the international markets. We are a year down the line and no deals have been signed yet. The great danger is that if we crash out of the European Union, we would move to having default World Trade Organization tariffs in place and we would have no support in terms of payment because farming is simply not profitable. The UFU is now saying that Britain will have to trade internationally but its main competitor will be the European Union. The UFU is saying in debates such as this one that in terms of farmers who voted for Brexit to deregulate the sector, that its regulation will now have to be increased. When they go to sell their products on the international market, the first thing they will be asked by potential buyers is why would they buy a British product when they have a European product of a high standard. Therefore, farmers will have to provide a higher standard product for that market. Overall, this is very complex.

Our feedback from Downing Street is that they are all over the place on Brexit, that there is no consensus within the Cabinet, there is no clear thought, their advisers are out of their depth and the UK Brexit Secretary is not on top of his brief. Given the general election that is taking place, if there were to be a fracture in the negotiations on the issue of the bill that the EU is seeking from the British Government, that would not bode well for us. There is a great risk that the talks could break down at a very early stage.