Ms Alison Hough:

I thank Senator Craughwell for his complimentary words on the report. He has hit on one of the real problems with Brexit regarding what the terminology means. What is meant by a "hard border" and what is meant by a "hard Brexit"? They can mean different things in different contexts to different people. In terms of the idea that there was no hard border and that wildlife was always able to cross, the inference is that it will still be able to cross the Border in the field, if one likes. When I was in Queen's University with some of my colleagues who were working on the Brexit issue, one of them had a photograph of the Border, which was a little drain through a bog in the middle of nowhere. It went through a special area of conservation, SAC. There is no military in the vicinity of the drain or no wall and the wildlife in the area can cross over and back regardless of what we discuss here and what happens with Brexit. The management of that area and the integrity of the area will degrade if the environmental protections on one side of the drain are lower than on the other side. Environmental management does not work if one has a conjoined area divided in that way in a regulatory sense. The real issue is whether the two administrations can come together to have effective environmental management and whether that is even possible if the regulations are put on a bonfire and the standards drop on one side of the Border.