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

I congratulate the Minister of State on her personal input in the portfolio she has been given. She has done herself and the country proud. I compliment her colleagues - the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and other Ministers - who have engaged in the debate on Brexit. They have done extremely well. On that basis, I note that we are coming to a critical stage in the negotiations and should be careful not to go to the end product. We will take each stage as it comes and maintain our position. We will proceed in the clear knowledge that our colleagues in the UK decided of their own volition to leave the European Union. They did not negotiate with anyone as to what the consequences might be in the event that things went wrong. There will be consequences. For example, if a particular arrangement were to emerge whereby the UK was to have the same benefits outside the EU, the Union would be put at risk and it would be only a short time before other countries wanted to do the same. Against that backdrop, we need to continue to be consistent as consistency is important in the negotiations.

The various negotiators have not put a foot wrong, from an Irish perspective, in the context of the island economy, North and South. The Good Friday Agreement has been dealt with extremely well and sensitively and that commitment remains. If the UK leaves the European Union, as it has indicated it will do, it will make an application to return within five years. I cannot see any other option. The logic of where the whole debate is heading is that the intention was to leave at all costs and regardless of the consequences. There will be consequences and they will not be beneficial to the European Union, to Britain, to Ireland or anywhere else. I congratulate the Minister of State on the stance taken by the Irish negotiators and long may it continue.

The engagement on the future of Europe is a very worthwhile exercise. The Minister of State attended Maynooth University and various other locations nationally on this. This engagement is about taking ownership of the European project and, as such, it is hugely important. Instead of remaining aloof from the European Union and saying what it is doing wrong, this is part and parcel of communities within member states taking ownership.

As to immigration, Irish people were economic migrants for many years and we should never turn a blind eye to the fact that we were in this situation ourselves. There is a humanitarian issue and an economic one. There are options of course. We can all decide to rely on investment from south-east Asia, Australia, Canada and other places and send our youth there for jobs in the future or we can encourage investment job creation within this country and the European Union which will, naturally, bring with it people who are pursuing those jobs. We have the option of either going abroad to get our employment or having the jobs here and encouraging people who want to work in various industries to come on board.

On low carbon, it is getting to the point where we need to be able to say to the European Union, environmentalists and ourselves that we can take certain steps which will have a substantial and positive impact on emissions. If we do not do that, it will go on for ever and there will be talk of culling the beef herd and the other nonsense that goes on. There are realistic things we can do, including the electrification of cars and reducing reliance on them. Emission reductions will be achieved in that way without damaging our economy. Let us do the things we can do without too much economic destruction first and after that we can look at the next important issue.