Ms Martina Anderson:

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir. I thank everybody. I am delighted to be here. Unlike Ms Sheerin, who is in rural constituency, I am in the heart of what some people think is the mother of democracy in the North, namely, Parliament Buildings, and we still have technical problems. We actually have more technical problems in this building then people have in Mid Ulster, which is saying something. It is fantastic to get an opportunity to engage with everybody today. I apologise for missing the beginning of the meeting. I am now on my own device. I have given up on the Parliament Buildings one because I could not hear anything that was being said.

Listening to Ms Sheerin, I picked up on the question about what happened last night. Anyone with a titter of wit in terms of understanding the implications of Brexit knew that, unfortunately, there were going to be consequences and there was going to be a border somewhere. We all live very close to the Border and the people of the North of Ireland realised what a hardening of the Border in Ireland would do to our political process, to the all-Ireland economy and to the Good Friday Agreement in all of its parts. We have had a border in the Irish Sea for many years. We knew the hardening of that would be a consequence because there was going to be a border somewhere.

Throughout the process, we heard political unionists telling us that they would prefer a harder Brexit so long as there was Brexit. We tried to explain that it was going to be an unmitigated disaster.

As well as leaving the EU, there are, as the Chairman and Senators will all be aware, 759 treaties with 168 other countries, and Britain needs to renegotiate all that just to stand still. At this stage we need calm heads. Listening to the news reports quoting the PSNI this morning, there does not seem to be a loyalist threat. There seems to have been graffiti. Lots of graffiti has gone up on the walls in recent times. The PSNI has not given any confirmation that these threats, insofar as it would categorise them as threats, are coming from loyalists. There are lots of dynamics at play here. We had a LucidTalk poll just in the past few days that would speak to unionism as to where its people are at and where people are looking to, whether it be the Alliance Party, Traditional Unionist Voice, TUV, or others. There may be other reasons people are reacting as they are. They have been calling for Article 16 to be revoked and to be triggered, as we know from the past few weeks, and unfortunately, the statement from the Commission was a disaster insofar as it was not thought through. Could the Chairman impart some information to us as to whether it was red-flagged with her end? I mean the totality of the Parliament in Leinster House because the South has a Commissioner, Mairead McGuinness, who would be in receipt of at least a note, as Commissioners are, informing them as to what the Commission's position would be. Was the Irish Government in any way informed about this beforehand? While some members may have been, was the Government informed about it before it was referred to? We need that kind of information flow. While Sinn Féin has one MEP there now, obviously people are not on the ground in the European Parliament any more than Deputies and Senators are on the ground in the building. We see in the North that democratic deficit by not having an MEP in the European Parliament.

The British Government and the EU made declarations in December when they signed off on what is in effect an association agreement. It is not a free trade agreement. It is not the deep and meaningful comprehensive agreement that was promised. It is only an association agreement and anyone who understands what that means in Europe will understand that it is very light-touch. We also know they made a declaration that forbids the British Government from asking for an extension to the grace periods. We have three-month, six-month and one-year grace periods, that is, three months for retail trade, six months for frozen food and so on and one year for medicines. We need to ensure we use this grace period wisely if we do not want to end up on a cliff edge. Even though, personally and politically, we would have a lot of sympathy for the argument that these periods need to be extended, we tried to get the transition extended and we could not. There is a lot of sympathy for the extension of those grace periods and for trying to get derogations but given that both have said in the declaration that the British Government then needs to implement the EU acquis, what we would benefit from would be an understanding from the South's end as to what has happened at its ports in order that we can have a learning experience and perhaps be able to share that when, for instance, hauliers, traders and others engaging with us point to what is happening in Dublin. As much as the Chairman is pointing to what has happened here, I think Border Communities Against Brexit, BCAB, has been directing people towards Warrenpoint and Dublin because they are saying that perhaps Larne or Belfast needs to close, whether temporarily or otherwise, until this is sorted out.

We know that people are looking to the South as a supply chain and that businesses are pragmatic when it comes to doing business, and rightly so.

I will say to the chair of our own committee that we would benefit from some understanding on the Seanad committee's end as to what is happening at Dublin Port, which we could relay to people here. We must ensure that we do not waste the grace period and that we try to put preparations in place in order that what happened in Britain at the end of the transition period is not visited upon businesses, including traders, in the North. The sharing of information is important. I agree with Ms Sheerin that this is a great opportunity to engage with the Seanad committee. I hope that this is one of many such meetings going forward.