Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 5 December 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs

General Affairs Council: Discussion

2:30 pm

Photo of Paul CoghlanPaul Coghlan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late; Seanad business and a vote held me up. I agree with my colleagues generally, and congratulate the Minister of State and her colleagues at Government level for all their inputs at the various meetings in the recent past. On Brexit, the most significant of the three votes in the House of Commons yesterday was the final one, the motion proposed by the former Attorney General of the UK, Dominic Grieves. He is a very learned man. While Downing Street would not admit it, that motion could be interpreted as a Downing Street backstop. It is clear that thankfully there is no majority for a no-deal scenario in the House of Commons. Parliament will have a stay if, as expected, the Prime Minister loses the vote next Tuesday. The important thing now is to consider the future arrangements; I am sure the Minister of State has begun to think of those arrangements already. While nobody envisages any change to the deal hammered out, I understand that the declaration document on the future arrangement can be tweaked. Perhaps it is largely a fudge anyway; the Minister of State will be more familiar with that than I am. It might not be appropriate for the Minister of State to comment on that. At this stage we have to look beyond next Tuesday. Presumably the Prime Minister will attend the following summit, and it is possible that things will happen there. There will then be subsequent votes in the House of Commons due to the decision on the Grieves motion yesterday. I look forward to the comments of the Minister of State.

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