Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My colleagues will have heard these questions before, but I put them now in terms of Professor McCrudden's presentation and in order to tease the model out from the perspective of agriculture. Professor McCrudden seems to angle towards the east-west model. I will stick with agriculture specifically. If the EU agrees that as part of negotiations Northern Ireland or the island of Ireland will get a special status, beef producing farmers, for example, in the Twenty-six Counties will still be paid up EU members in receipt of CAP payments. There will be no CAP in the North. I cannot see the EU going that far. While it might give the island a special status, I cannot see it funding that. As such, there will be a divide within the agricultural model straight away. If we have an east-west border, will there be tariffs on Northern Ireland beef if there are tariffs on Southern Ireland beef? One then has the element of farmers in the North of Ireland who will dig in their heels and say their beef is British beef. It has come across loud and clear in our deliberations with many groups - such as that which appeared before us this morning - that they would accept a tariff, which would be a better scenario than a division on the island. Almost everyone who has attended - and ourselves - favours a model of special status. If it were achieved in the morning with an east-west border as opposed to a hard border North-South, would we have opened a complete can of worms in terms of working out the logistics of the all-island model?