Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the ambassador and her deputy and other representatives of embassies in Dublin. I hope the six-month Presidency of Finland will be a success. Finland is very experienced in this regard. I look forward to representing the committee's Chairman and members at a COSAC meeting on 21 and 22 July in Helsinki. I hope it will be a happy event but it sounds very serious so far. Ordinary water is very good provided it is properly treated, but it sounds like a case of sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless, we will be prepared to look at the situation. I am sure there is a bit of joy in Helsinki and that it will be a happy occasion. I hope it will not all be doom and gloom albeit we have a great deal to worry about here. That is not my impression of Finland, by the way. I hope the Presidency will be successful as it is an opportunity to highlight the country of Finland among the other member states.

As Deputy Durkan said, we are concerned here about Brexit. I do not know if Finland can use its influence to bring about some change of heart in the United Kingdom and to improve the negotiations. I have not been impressed by the television presentation from behind the doors of the European negotiator from the European Parliament. In the fly-on-the-wall presentation, he was so impressed by the delegation from the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, BIPA, that he mixed it up with a delegation from the House of Commons. That was inaccurate as two or three members of the BIPA delegation in Brussels in December 2017 were from the Houses of the Oireachtas. During the documentary, he informed everyone that the leader of the group, Andrew Rosindell MP, was joint chairman of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and he was there to discuss a report we were preparing on the fall-out from a no-deal Brexit. I thought that was an awful invasion of privacy. Seemingly there were people recording these meetings. I was recorded myself and it was broadcast without permission. It was a unique situation and I have never come across anything like it. I was a Minister of State in the negotiation on the Single European Act but I have never seen such an invasion of privacy. There was also a condescending approach to the United Kingdom's application. I was not impressed by the carry-on of the negotiators or by their attitude as an indication of their treatment of the negotiation. Ireland is dealing with the fallout of this situation but we did not have a very great input into the negotiation from what I could see. It was a two-part series that was broadcast on RTÉ on Monday and Tuesday night. I watched it closely and I was not impressed. I hope the conduct of meetings in future will be more confidential and respectful of negotiations than I saw in that documentary. I say that publicly under parliamentary privilege because I resent what happened.