Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for their dissertation. It is an interesting exchange of views at an interesting time. As we know, Europe is inhaling at the moment. We have to wait for it to exhale and we do not know what the outcome will be. We do not know whether Brexit will lead to the destruction of Europe. It could, in that it could undermine the whole structure of Europe. The UK could be the first of others to go. I strongly advise all and sundry that such an outcome would not be in the interests of this country, Europe, Britain, ironically, or the globe.

We should all recognise that those present are totally committed to the Irish economic entity on the island of Ireland. We have set that down from the beginning and there will be no watering down of that. It is injudicious to suggest from time to time that we do not believe what people say. If a person does not believe what another says to him, presumably, the person is expecting the comment to become a self-fulfilling prophesy and, as a result, there is no use having negotiations.

It is of the utmost importance that we maintain the stance we have had from the beginning, that is to say, the question as set down by the European negotiators and the Government at the beginning of the year and that we maintain it without variation. Of course, people will decide from time to time that we have reason not to believe it. If we sow that into the ether, then it becomes part of what the defence will use, the defence being the UK authorities. They will say the people did not believe them and will ask what one would expect. Then they will row away from it so they do not have to achieve any agreement.

The Single Market and customs union are of the utmost importance. We are operating as an island nation and that is the way the European negotiators have stated it will be. That is the way the British Government negotiators reluctantly admitted that it would be or how they hoped it would be but they then cast doubts upon the water, throwing bread upon the water, as it were, to try to undermine it. Of course they are going to do that - that is their negotiating position. Anyway, they must remember one thing: they decided to leave the European Union. They did not seek approval from anyone else. We, they and everyone else in the European Union are part of the Union. We all agreed to it. Several treaties were entered into incorporating what we have now as the European Union. We have a commitment to it.