Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have been given assurances with regard to services, particularly on the island of Ireland, and the degree to which the two jurisdictions co-operate and depend upon each other. This is not easy to untangle. It has been put in place and it is working. We have been assured this will continue unimpeded. It is required on both sides of the Border to ensure each can depend on the other to allow the status quo to prevail. With regard to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, whereby we can send patients to Northern Ireland or the UK, as it happens, we are informed this will continue to the same extent and that any issues that are likely to arise have already been identified. Time will tell the extent to which this is effective.

I want to mention again, in case people might get the wrong impression that all of this can restart and we will have a renegotiation of everything that has happened, that this cannot happen. I can understand what the UK is looking for. It is looking to despatch the trappings of the EU and the restrictions, as they see it, of the EU and to form trade arrangements with all countries and any country, including the EU. The EU will be an important trader so far as the UK is concerned after this. I emphasise that a situation might emerge whereby a trade agreement could undermine the existing arrangements within the EU to the detriment of its member states, and that cannot happen. If it were to happen, we could all retire because it would mean a return to the old old days. We know trade agreements have to be observed by two sides or more, as the case may be. I set down this marker. I do not want to get involved in the politics of another country as we have enough problems in our own, but it might happen during the general election in the UK that there might be an understanding or sub-understanding, so to speak, to the effect that when the election is over, the UK will renegotiate, have free range with everybody and will be able to negotiate with whom it likes regardless of what trade arrangements issue between the member states and third countries.