Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am the last contributor so I will ask my questions now to save the Minister responding a second time. I concur with the many Senators who have spoken about beyond Brexit and building that relationship or setting up the structures. Minister, you have spoken about exchanges between the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach. They are already looking to that new mechanism, but it might be worth considering, and perhaps it is being considered, to have it not just at governmental level but also at parliament level. It would be not just Ministers but all Members of this Parliament having more opportunity to engage with Members of Parliament in the UK. Some of those Members will end up moving up the ranks to the level of Government. We should not seek simply to replace the structures that exist but to go better and stronger than that. We should get beyond this and make it an even better and stronger relationship post Brexit, and get everybody working on it.

Perhaps the Minister will clarify one matter. If a person is living in Northern Ireland and working in the Republic, is it the common travel area that is the legal basis for doing that in terms of getting a personal public service, PPS, number, being paid and the practicalities of it?

With regard to Dover port, has the Minister had any more recent updates as to how it is preparing in comparison with the preparations that have happened at Dublin Port, for example, in terms of building new infrastructure for checks and a traffic management plan? How is it fixed for 1 January?

As regards the Finance Bill, I am concerned that it is even being suggested that there is a possibility the UK Government could be setting out purposely to undermine the negotiations with a view to having a no-deal scenario, and perhaps with a view to trying to blame the EU for it. I sincerely hope that what is being rumoured and suggested by some is not true. I am finding it difficult to decipher the end game of the UK Government. Whenever a person starts a negotiation, he or she always knows where he or she wishes to get to, and usually that person has an idea of where he or she is willing to compromise. Perhaps he or she ends up compromising a little more, but that person knows what the end result is supposed to be. I assume the UK Government knows whether it wants or does not want a deal, but it is quite hard to read the situation at times. I would welcome the Minister's thoughts on what he is hearing on the Finance Bill. Are we going to see a repeat of what happened with the Internal Market Bill, with a direct and overt attack on the withdrawal agreement and the protocol on Northern Ireland?

They are the main questions. In terms of the Brexit supports, there might be a job of work to be done after 1 January, and this committee will certainly examine it. The supports we have in place are many and substantial. Perhaps those supports should be assessed in mid-February or thereabouts to see if they are still fit for purpose and working and to see if anything else must be done to help. Regarding the sausage wars and the potato wars, it was unfortunate that we had news reports this week of a shortage of potatoes and they were lined up alongside the RTÉ documentary on the Famine. It brought people's minds back. It is amazing what focuses the mind and the things that impact on people. There is an element of citizens thinking things are going to be fine, because they have been fine to date, and perhaps not fully understanding that after 1 January they will change.

What struck me most from the Minister's contribution on the fishing issue was his comment that what we want is fish, not money. I support him on that. We could financially compensate fishing communities today, but if we do that there will be no fishing communities 50 years hence because the next generation will not have those fishing opportunities. It is very important for protecting the fishing industry in the future that people can actually fish.