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

There is no problem there in continuing to work because that person is an EU citizen. If an EU national comes to Ireland, he or she can work at whatever he or she wants even if that person is resident in Northern Ireland. Such a person is an EU national resident outside the EU but, in the context of work, in the fairly extraordinary arrangement under the protocol, is frontier working in the EU.

I believe I am correct in that. The person is frontier working in the EU, so there is no issue.

In response to Senator Gallagher's point on the Border counties, in the first half of the Brexit negotiations, when we were trying to get a withdrawal agreement, I spent a lot of time in the Border counties at public meetings with stakeholder groups and so on, because the big concern near the Border was whether we were going to have a physical border again, a barrier to trade and movement of goods. Of course, that is no longer an issue. The danger is that many people in the Border counties, because the Border issue gets solved by the protocol, think everything is solved. Actually, for the all-island economy, most things are solved. That is what the protocol does: it allows the free movement of goods on the island of Ireland without any checking system. However, there are other issues that, under the protocol, need teasing out in terms of implementation, so people need to be alive to that. Even on issues like purchasing online from the UK, the consumer protections we take for granted under EU directives and EU law today no longer apply, and we will be relying on whatever consumer protections the British Government decides to introduce. For example, we are potentially exposed in terms of returns policies. If there is a fault with what is bought, people normally get their money back. However, all the things we would have taken for granted whereby people trust purchasing something in the UK, just like they would trust purchasing something in Ireland, now have question marks over them because we are purchasing from a third country, the equivalent of the US, Canada or elsewhere.

I take the Senator's point in regard to the communications campaign. Believe it or not, we have actually had a communications campaign going in the last few weeks. It has been on television, on radio and on local media, but it is so hard to break through the Covid fog that has descended on Ireland, which means everything is seen through a Covid lens and it is dominant in terms of media coverage. By the way, it is the same in the UK too, which might be quite helpful to us in the context of finalising a Brexit deal, in my view, because there is not huge interest in Brexit in the British media right now, and it is very much focused on Covid, on vaccines and on the three-tier system that has been introduced, and all of the debate around that. I hope that may potentially give some cover to allow for sensible compromises that can get a deal done, but we will see.

I spoke earlier about the UK-Ireland relationship, which is very important. We are going to put structure around that. I take the Senator's point in regard to that going beyond Governments and Ministers. There is an interparliamentary group and maybe we could look to modernise that a bit and to add to its agenda in a way that creates a bit more dynamism and more interest to discuss policy, as well as build relationships. If the Senator has suggestions in that area, I could discuss them.

On the €5 billion Brexit adjustment fund, as I said yesterday and earlier today, this is a €5 billion fund for the whole of the European Union. I am pretty confident that Ireland will make a stronger case than any other country because it is simply the truth that we are more disrupted than any other country due to Brexit and, therefore, we should be accessing more of this fund than any other country. When the Senator says we should get the lion's share of it, I think that is perhaps dangerous language. If there is a fund for 27 countries, no one country is going to get more than half of the fund. If we got 20% of the fund, we would be doing very well and it would probably be twice the amount the next closest country gets.