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

I think the US would like to do a trade deal with the UK and that it would also be open to doing a trade deal with the EU. This is an administration that wants to reach out and build transatlantic trade partnerships, which is good news for Ireland and for the UK. President Biden has been very consistent and firm, as have the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent individuals in the Friends of Ireland group, such as Richard Neal, Brendan Boyle and others, who have been extraordinarily supportive through the Brexit journey. They have been very clear that if the UK was to undermine the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement by not implementing what it had agreed to implement to protect the Agreement, that would have knock-on consequences on the UK's ambition to get a trade deal across the line because there would be a lot of pushback against that.

My view on this, for what it is worth, is that we should be talking about a transatlantic trade agreement that involves the EU, the UK, the US, Canada and any others that want to be part of it. Why are we talking about bilateral relations and some sort of competition to see who can do a trade deal with the US first? We should be trying to create a trade platform based around the Atlantic with the EU, the US, Canada, the UK and other countries that border the ocean, just like the trans-Pacific trade agreement that has been put in place. We could do something comprehensive and this current US Administration under President Biden is very open to developing much closer and stronger ties, both trade and political, with Europe as a whole. It may be a way to work with the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, politically we are quite a long way off that at the moment in the language that is being used in Westminster but that would be the logical road to travel if we are looking to benefit from removing trade barriers to a big market like the US, as we have done with Canada. There is no reason the UK should not be involved in those discussions, rather than having this competitive race to see who can do a trade deal first. I do not get the logic of that. It does not build the kind of relationship I would like the UK and the EU to have in the future.