Ms Martina Anderson:

I wish to pick up on the point relating to the cross-border health directive. I have been dealing with a constituent. Indeed, I dealt with several of them prior to the transition period ending. Constituents in the North were obviously able to avail of the cross-border health directive. For example, a number were able to go to Navan and other hospitals in the South.

EU law, policies and funding have touched on almost every aspect of life in the North. Brexit has also touched on many aspects of life as a consequence of us being dragged out against the majority, who voted to remain. That is one of the things we have lost. While we have an area of co-operation in the Good Friday Agreement for health, we will have 151 areas of EU laws intersecting with the assembly's competency and with the Houses of the Oireachtas on an all-Ireland basis.

There has been some scrutiny of the kind of engagement going on at the moment around Covid-19 in terms of the areas of co-operation around health. We have heard about the memorandum of understanding. We know we had challenges, if not difficulties, around the implementation of that area of co-operation. We know on an all-Ireland basis, unfortunately, we have had two different operations with the rolling out of Covid-19.

The loss of that EU health directive is very much impacting on resident citizens in the North who can no longer avail of it. That was one of the ways they were able to look at paying some contribution towards their care, because they were able to get 50% paid for by this directive. Now, that is not the case. While discussions are taking place I do not believe that the kind of priority given to an all-Ireland approach to this issue has been materialising on the floor given the questions the three of us in this room have been asking the Minister of Health in the North and the Minister for Health in the South and the collaboration that is required and how we need an all-Ireland approach.

We have heard from Gabriel Scally - as well as many other professionals - who looked at New Zealand and other places in the world to show us the only way that we are going to tackle the virus. We cannot confront and tackle what we cannot see and we have to go about doing this on an all-Ireland collaborative basis.

Based on what is happening in the North, there has been considerable focus and attention given to trade, and perhaps rightly so. That was happening even during the transition period and during the conversation about the impact of Brexit.

Article 2 was picked up on. We had An Taoiseach, as he was at the time, Deputy Varadkar telling the people of the North that no Irish Government would ever again leave us behind. One of the first things that I believe the southern establishment could have done, because it was within its gift, related to the three electoral seats given to the South when the MEPs from the North and Britain were kicked out of the EU. It could have allocated them to the North. This was the first signal to us that the democratic deficit was not only not going to be honoured but that we were being left behind. Article 2 in the withdrawal agreement and in the protocol relates to our rights. We are Irish. As a former MEP, I had not one but two Irish passports, which I cherished. I had a diplomatic Irish passport. It says on our passport that it is the right and entitlement of everyone born on the island of Ireland to be part of the Irish nation. I know we have people here who are British and I respect the fact that they are British and that they want their rights upheld.

In fact, I was the only MEP when I was there to take the unionists over to meet the Commission to ensure that there would be an equivalence of rights across the North and that we would not have a situation whereby because we were Irish passport holders, it would not give us some additional rights compared with other people.

We want rights across the board. We have had before us at a hearing the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commissioner. She is very focused on the equivalence of rights across the island. We have an all-island charter of rights coming out of the Good Friday Agreement. Just as we do not have a bill of rights, the all-island charter of human rights has not materialised either. There is work for us to do to make sure that we protect everyone here regardless of our religious denomination or the colour of our skin. We need to truly engage with each other. Even though there will be bumps on the road ahead as we walk towards a future that, I think, will result in constitutional change, we need to do so mindfully and respectfully of the differences that we all say were so carefully fostered unfortunately by an alien government. We need to be mindful of our language. Sometimes we have had to be tough and sometimes we have had to call it for what it is and what is happening around us.

Some things have been lost to us in the North and one of those things that has been lost across the island is the cross-border health directive for the North. In the South, people have opportunities to go elsewhere in the EU. In the North, people do not have any opportunities at all now because of Brexit. That is one of the many losses we have had in North.