Mr. Éanna Ó Conghaile:

So that is one possibility. If the protocol is not in place then we would seek to bring this part of the Act into place. What this allows for is an informal arrangement first, and this is all allowed under the EU treaties. Where there is not an EU third country agreement on something then the member state is allowed to engage on a bilateral basis. There is a mechanism in this part of the Bill that allows us to have an informal arrangement, by way of a phone call or letter, with our counterparts in the Department for Transport in the UK, to basically say, let us work on a bilateral but in the meantime for the next 24 weeks we will keep things in place.