Ms Mairead McGuinness:

I thank the Senator for the three points she raised. On the issue of rule of origin, I recall a politician in Northern Ireland saying that while they may be British, all their cows are Irish. That was to do with a particular animal disease issue. I understand this problem well. I am asking the following question rather than answering it.

Can there be a bespoke trade agreement to deal exclusively with rules of origin for Ireland and Northern Ireland? Equally, be mindful that sometimes, if rules of origin are stretched, they might work against the interests of Ireland. It is difficult to say that we can fix that. I will talk to my colleague, Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, about it. He is now Commissioner responsible for trade. I will talk to his cabinet about that. I would caution that something that looks simple, if applied, could have unintended consequences. I know it is a problem for both the dairy and alcohol industries.

Regarding grace periods, I do not think that any of us are optimistic, which is disappointing, because significant work has been done on the EU side to acknowledge and grant the request for an extension. I can speak without even checking with my colleague, Maroš Šefovi. We are not planning to offer an extension to the extension. This could be never-ending. That is not how you do business or implement agreements. We have offered that extension but it came with conditions. We would like to see the UK work on transferring data that are required for checks and putting in place what is required to implement an agreement that Boris Johnson signed, perhaps to get Brexit done. Maybe not enough people read or understood it but that is not our concern. We read it, understood it, respect it, and ask that the co-signatories respect it equally. I hope that will happen. I hear members' pessimism and sometimes I go there too. On the other hand, I hope that global Britain will see the importance of honouring an international agreement.

We referred to Belarus earlier. Sanctions are in place. There is a question of whether this impacts sufficiently on somebody who rules with an iron fist and has no regard for human rights. Usually people bring about change. We have to be mindful about helping that without interfering. We reacted appropriately to completely unacceptable behaviour, with a Ryanair flight being taken to ground and people being removed from it. I speak to some of our interns. Sometimes we in the developed world, a term which I use guardedly, where we have a democracy which we criticise, which is important, really do not understand that a lot of the world does not have democracy and would love to. There are two points here. One is to try to make sure that when people see how Europe or member states function, they see that democracy is something that they cherish. That is absolutely the case with Belarus. It was lovely to see the leader of the opposition in Belarus reunited with her family in Ireland. I watched that on the news. She carries a significant burden on her shoulders. She did not want to be a politician. Her husband is unfortunately not available to carry this burden. She is doing it. You have to be brave to do that. She is under threat. We are doing anything that we can. If more is needed, we will do that too. This is something that the Ministers for foreign affairs will look at and continue to be active about.

There are many other parts of the world where we could do more. Perhaps with the United States back around the table and the multilateral issue that I referred to, we will see greater co-ordination with sanctions regimes, effective implementation and making sure that we do not hit those that we should not. Humanitarian assistance is important in places like Syria and many others. While we have sanctions, we equally have to look at humanitarian issues.

I thank the Senator for being with us. I welcomed our engagement at the Senator's committee recently.