Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh Mr. Verhofstadt anseo inniu and I thank him for his time. He visited the Border yesterday and I hope all the cows will be as quiet as those he met in Monaghan. He said we needed to sort out and clean up our banking but we left it a bit late in the day for that. We did not get a lot of assistance when we had the crash and we had to sign up to some very stiff penalties.

Mr. Verhofstadt said other countries had recently had votes which were more conciliatory towards the EU, and that is good. I interpreted him as saying there was one last chance to be more democratic, but democracy in Brussels has been lost. I welcome our MEPs here today, but there have been many regulations and restrictions as to what we can and cannot do and that is why Brexit happened. They need to look at that, and comments from some very senior people after Brexit were not very helpful.

Mr. Verhofstadt might elaborate on what he meant by a frictionless border. There is a massive border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is much bigger than ours with three checkpoints and which was built with EU funding. Mr. Verhofstadt says it will not happen here and that Great Britain will have to look after the Border, but that is not good enough for us. We need concrete and tangible measures. It is difficult but we need to know the bottom line and the impact it will have on the Single Market, among other issues.