Ms Emily O'Reilly:

As the Senator will be aware, a large conference on the future of Europe is about to kick off. It will be interesting to see how that goes because the first big argument was over who should chair it. Instead of having one chairperson, it will now have three presidents, as well as deputy presidents and further layers – gang loads of them - involved. There are also different views as to what outcomes people can expect. Ireland was, if I recall correctly, one of 12 member states that wrote a letter last week warning not to raise expectations and saying that nothing should come out of this that will involve treaty change, whether major or minor, although obviously that is a political issue.

As anyone who has read about historical events of this nature will know, whether it be a world war, a famine or even the sinking of the Titanic, curiously, which led to all sorts of social change, huge change comes out of them. I think that what will happen because of this will be the future direction of the EU will be greatly influenced, and the debate between those who think there should be more Europe and those who think there should be less will be influenced by this.

One could argue that because of what has happened to Europe and the issues with vaccine contracts and what I have said about the ECDC and so on is an argument for more Europe. On the other hand, what has happened in the UK, as committee members will be aware if they can bear to read some of the press there, has convinced people they did the right thing.

As for the impact, I was reading earlier that one step the UK is going to take, because the EU threatened the supply chain, is to attempt to decouple itself from the EU supply chain and become more self-sufficient. The impact of this on the UK, ironically, might even be that it has a better Brexit. Part of the power of the UK and the British Empire over centuries was based on innovation, whether it was the quality of its armadas, the steam engine or any of the other amazing innovations that came from and fuelled the empire. I think this will give an impetus to the UK to become more self-sufficient and to increase its use of innovation. As for how far that will go, I do not know but one can see how this will, perhaps, change the direction in which one might have thought the EU, or the UK post Brexit, was going to go.