Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am chairman of the German-Irish parliamentary friendship group and have just left a meeting of it. We were talking about the situation in the North of Ireland. It was really heartening to hear them place in order several issues in terms of their importance. For them, the first and most important issue is the maintenance of the Good Friday Agreement. The second is the integrity of the Single Market. After that, they felt measures that could be put in place for the social development of the island of Ireland, as we move forward in whatever guise, were important. That was really heartening to hear from people who were geographically removed from the island.

Tomorrow morning the German delegation will be in Dundalk to meet civic groups from all communities. If there was a latent aspect to Brexit which we could not have imagined, it would be the familiarisation of foreign governments with the Irish problem. The Institute of International and European Affairs has much to do with it too in terms of how it feeds into other think tanks surrounding the European Commission.