Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will speak directly to the two questions. On the first, I will speak to a different strand of European opinion because I had the delight of spending my weekend virtually in Strasbourg at the first Conference on the Future of Europe plenary session as a delegate of the Oireachtas along with other Deputies, including Deputy Brady, who is on this committee. I am very involved within Fine Gael and our Europe-wide political family, the European People's Party. The mood on the general Brexit discussion as well as the specific protocol discussion, where there remains a mood - the vast majority of colleagues have moved on very distinctly and many colleagues never really had the level of interest that certainly we in Ireland did - is one of serious frustration and misunderstanding among those who remain with a watching brief. It is not a misunderstanding of the mood in Northern Ireland. I think everyone with half a wit can appreciate that unionists are very concerned and indeed have a right to be so, and the mood is very worrying for many of them in their communities. There is, however, a lack of understanding of what is going on in the British Government. It is not helped by repeated articles, as was mentioned, or repeated comments by certain ministers doing down a treaty they themselves negotiated and ratified merely months ago. There just seems to be quite an ignorance of how European systems work at a political level, which is really disappointing.

I repeat that, every time there is a daft article in certain British newspapers, we do read it, we do see it and it does have an impact. We are all very good at stressing, rightly, the importance and the desire to maintain good, cordial relations, which we are all endeavouring to do, but those things do not always help and have certainly made things very difficult. From an Irish point of view, trying to play a very proactive role within the European Union, possibly looking for flexibility within the protocol or just reaffirming that this can last, it is very hard to be the UK's best friend within the European Union if at the same time British Government Ministers are going out to trash the agreement or trash the European Union itself.

To go to the point about Article 16, that was all very clear at the time and, as the Chair and others rightly said, those officials in the European Commission who deliberated on this for a couple of hours certainly would never do it again. The number of times that has been rolled out as the reason to justify unilateral actions and to seek to break international law is pretty tiring at this stage. Hearing certain voices, political and otherwise, constantly harping back to that without ever acknowledging some of the really lousy things that have been said and done in the other direction gets tough to take, and the currency of that has been well and truly spent.

Moving on to the second question and in response to Baroness O'Loan, the opportunities are vast and they are fundamentally economic opportunities for Northern Ireland to look to diversify. Many people understandably made good play of the importance of the GB export market to NI, but there is now huge opportunity in diversifying the export market with the Continent, just like we are doing in Ireland, and looking to see where that level of joined-up thinking and co-operation can be done on an all-island basis. One of the key aims going into the Brexit process was the maintenance of the all-island economy. It really does not matter what your political persuasion is or whether you are in business or whether you are a consumer as long as you can see your economy grow and your society improve as a result of that. Baroness Ritchie mentioned some of the opportunities Dale Farm has had, but we also saw a whole range of other sectors talking about the opportunities: the tech sector, financial services and many in the agrifood sector.

To supplement the points Deputy Haughey made about the shared island unit, that is a huge untapped resource. We are talking in this jurisdiction about a higher education strategy for the north west, but that does not include our third level institutions in the city of Derry. How do we have joined-up thinking about the entire island and the entire region? We are a relatively small island, and the more we work together and the more we use the protocol, the more opportunities there will be for many people to come. It can be an exciting time if a lot of the political sensitivities can be worked out about the potential, particularly in Northern Ireland. For someone sitting in an office in Dublin, when Northern Ireland succeeds socially and economically, the whole island thrives.