Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I agree with every word he has just said. I am very familiar with paragraph 49 of the December 2017 agreement. I quote it all the time to people. We worked really hard to get it agreed. I think the then Prime Minister, Ms May, understood the complexity of trying to protect the Good Friday Agreement and relationships on the island of Ireland at the same time as delivering Brexit and, because of that, gave that commitment and the commitment in paragraph 50, the next paragraph, to try to reassure unionism. What Prime Minister Johnson has proposed falls significantly short of that commitment. That is why I have said that while I regard Prime Minister Johnson's proposal as a serious one and an effort to try to move negotiations forward, there is still a need for another big step to ensure that an outcome here that we can all sign up to, I hope, is consistent with the paragraph the Chairman has just quoted and the commitments that have been made in the context of the backstop. If we are to replace the backstop with something else, it must do the same job, which is to reassure Border communities that they will not face Border infrastructure and the disruption it would bring in the future. It must also ensure that mechanisms in place in Northern Ireland to try to mitigate the damage of Brexit are not obstructed by a minority against the majority will. That would not be democratic or consistent with the Good Friday Agreement. The challenge for us is to try to find a way forward that unionists and nationalists, and members of the communities that are neither, can support. Ultimately, though, we must ensure we do not go back to a border on the island of Ireland being a political debating point and all that flows from that in terms of the corrosive impact on relationships and disruption to trade, which, as the Chairman knows, has been such a reinforcer of normality and peace in the Border region for the past two decades.

This is difficult stuff, but we want to work with the British Prime Minister, and of course we are working as part of Michel Barnier's team. We will do everything we can to try to get a deal in the next week or so. It must, however, be the right deal in order that we do not let people down and find that the Border becomes the topic of debate in Ireland for the foreseeable future, with all the divisions that flow from that and the calls for more radical change and so in in Northern Ireland, which I do not believe we are ready for, and I think the Chairman is of the same view. These are difficult times. We are writing the history of what the relationship between Britain and Ireland and between the EU and the UK will look like for the next 20 years, and we need to get it right.