Ms Emma Sheerin:

To follow what Mr. McGrath said, I said at the meeting that I feel almost as if we are being admonished for the lack of unionist representation. This, in itself, is the point that I have been making all along. Political unionism needs to come to the table and engage. The Assembly started at 10.30 this morning, but there was half an hour before that. There are unionist representatives on this committee who have not engaged. Perhaps they have other engagements and that is the reason they are not here. I do not know. However, it almost proves the point we are making here that we need conversation to flow both ways. Regarding the events last night at Larne, we are now finding out there was no formal threat and that the DUP Minister withdrew staff without an actual threat. One can make one's own assumptions on the rationale behind that. The point is we need to engage. We need a calm response from the unionist leadership and we must have conversations with people on the ground who feel that their identity is being threatened or that there is something to fear from what is now the formal border down the Irish Sea. The Irish Sea exists. It is a geographical reality.

Mr. McGrath spoke about intertwining trade matters with identity matters. I am an Irish republican, so I want to see things happening on the island of Ireland. I want to see Irish unification. There is no shock in that regard. However, I have constituents who have no political affiliation whatever and could not care less, but because of the situation we are in and the fact that we are part of the UK they made their business fit to that and they traded with Britain. Now that we have been taken out of the EU and those things are made difficult, they are looking for alternatives and another arrangement. Incidentally, it works out to be more efficient and sensible.

Logically, it makes sense that someone who was previously buying cattle in Scotland would now buy them in Monaghan. This is about exposing those kinds of things, trying to find solutions to the problems which have arisen and protecting the protocol as a means of protecting our businesses. We cannot force unionism to engage with us, but we can open the door and ask it to do so. We are doing that, and I do not know what else we can do in that regard. From my party's perspective, we have been clear about that aspect. We are not threatening anyone, and we do not want threats or violence or to have this situation hyped up. We want to have dialogue and conversation, and that is the sensible way forward.