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

I hear what the Deputy is saying but I also believe the ambassador made a clear distinction between the two things.

I will come to Brexit last because I would like to deal with Belarus and the Richard O'Halloran case first.

On Belarus, we are very much involved in the discussion, as the committee would expect. Irish people have solidarity with the plight of Belarusian people and what they are trying to bring about in their country, namely democratic legitimacy whereby they choose political leaders rather than having what is effectively a dictatorship that will not accept the will of the people as expressed in an election, which is what is currently in place. In the context of the relationship between Belarus and the EU, there has been a deliberate attempt by the Lukashenko regime to create tension with the EU effectively by bringing in vulnerable migrants from other parts of the world and bussing them to the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The regime is deliberately causing significant unrest at the borders, which is putting migrants in danger. It is creating genuine tension among the countries involved, both politically and socially. It is causing a lot of tension within the European Union. There has been a very deliberate effort by Belarus to destabilise political relationships within the countries that border it. This is reckless and puts some very vulnerable people in harm's way. Some of the refugees have lost their lives on the border. Belarus is also looking to try to paint the EU in a bad light as efforts are made to try to seal off borders in the region and try to manage the number of refugees crossing. What is occurring is effectively the state-sponsored use of vulnerable migrants to create political tension as a negotiating influencer. It is incredibly irresponsible. We are working to try to target new sanctions to respond to that. Members will see a fifth round of sanctions coming forward. Ireland has been very much involved in trying to shape them to send a very clear signal to Belarus that this is not acceptable.

With regard to Richard O'Halloran, I do not want to say too much because this is a consular case. It is probably the consular case that has been accorded more priority and taken up more time than any other over recent years. I am personally very involved in it by way of conversations and correspondence with my counterpart in China. Our embassy and representation in Shanghai are very much involved and speak to Richard regularly. We are keeping his family, including Tara, his wife, up to speed on the work we are doing. I am not sure it is helpful for me to get into all the legal detail on how we are trying to facilitate Richard's coming home, but we will continue to work with the Chinese authorities to get him home as soon as possible. The lack of public commentary from me on this issue should not be confused with a lack of political priority to get Richard O'Halloran back to his family in Dublin. In fact, the opposite is the case. We are deliberately not saying a lot publicly in an effort to ensure that we have an effective strategy to get Richard home as quickly as possible. For Richard's family, this matter has been a weight, and it has gone on and on.

The court case is complicated but I believe we are moving towards the end of the process. I do not want to give any direct timelines, however, because I cannot stand over them definitively just yet. I reassure people that there is an enormous effort under way to ensure that Richard will be allowed to come owing to the removal of the exit ban applying to him. He has been in China for a very long time and his children are growing up without him, which is something we are trying to correct as quickly as we can.

On Brexit, I am conscious that I do not want to turn this meeting into a Brexit meeting because, if I do, we could end up spending all the time on it. I do not want to give a monologue on Brexit either. We are at a really serious point now in the context of the Northern Ireland protocol. There is a serious risk that the British Government may choose to trigger Article 16. I hope it will not. We are working as hard as we can, as is the EU, to ensure that it will not. The EU, through Vice-President Šefovi, has for many months been in deal-making mode. It has been compromising and looking for ways to introduce flexibility in respect of how the protocol is implemented. Maroš Šefovi came to Belfast, met political leaders, business leaders and civil society leaders and promised them that he would go back to Brussels to try to design a package of measures that would respond to their key concerns. I believe he followed through on that promise when he responded to the four key issues people raised with him.

There has been concern for some time that medicines may be prevented from getting from Great Britain into Northern Ireland somehow because of the protocol. Given that we are still living through a global pandemic, this was completely unacceptable to people in Northern Ireland. I understand that. Mr. Šefovi has essentially agreed to change EU law to ensure there are no barriers to the entry to Northern Ireland of medicines approved in Great Britain, despite the fact that Northern Ireland effectively functions as an extension of the EU Single Market for goods under the protocol. That clear commitment to ensuring there would be no disruption of the supply of medicines to Northern Ireland from Great Britain was the first part of the package.

Second, business leaders and politicians want a significant reduction in checks and goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Mr. Šefovi has essentially proposed a way of reducing sanitary and phytosanitary checks on food products that are staying in Northern Ireland by up to 80%. This represents a massive change from where the European Commission was at the start of the year, or even in the middle of the year.

I think Maroš Šefovi has looked to push all the legal and regulatory boundaries within the confines of the protocol to allow for SPS checks largely not to apply to products coming from Great Britain into Northern Ireland that we can show are staying in Northern Ireland by improved labelling, better data sharing and so on. The approach is the same for customs checks. Maroš Šefovi claims that the EU can propose solutions that can reduce customs checks by 50% - in other words, halve them.

In the fourth area, governance, many unionist politicians in particular, but not only unionist politicians, have said to me that if the UK is to operate under the rules of the Single Market for goods, the UK must have improved structures of communication and governance as to how that will work and how it will plan for responding to that in Northern Ireland. Again, Maroš Šefovi has tried to respond to that concern by proposing new governance arrangements for direct dialogue and input from business and political leaders in Northern Ireland.

Taking all four of those things together, on top of some of the other concessions and flexibilities that have been shown over the past six months or so from the EU side, it has to be seen as a very genuine effort on the part of the Commission to try to solve these problems and settle people's concerns about the implementation of the protocol in the context of trying to deal with the Irish issues and the complexity of those that are forced by Brexit, or certainly forced by the kind of Brexit this British Government insisted on in Westminster. Unfortunately, the British Government has responded to those efforts by effectively banking concessions and flexibilities and looking for more, giving very little recognition of the extent to which the European Commission has moved in an effort to try to respond to the issues and concerns in Northern Ireland. The issue of the ECJ is in many ways one that is being prioritised in Westminster. It has not at all been an issue of priority in any of the discussions I have had or the Commission has had in Northern Ireland in the context of the implementation of the protocol.

Discussions are still under way this week. Maroš Šefovi and Lord Frost will meet again on Friday in London. I certainly hope they will find a way to move forward on the basis of discussion and partnership, as opposed to the British Government side deciding to trigger Article 16 at some point post COP, in the next few weeks, which I think will trigger a very robust response from the EU side. If the British Government decides to set aside formally elements of the protocol using Article 16 as a facilitator for that, I believe the EU will see that as an act of bad faith and it will impact negatively the relationship between the EU and the UK and put a lot of pressure on the relationship between the UK and Ireland. That is not what we need. It is not what Northern Ireland needs or deserves and, from the Irish Government's perspective, we will look to try to find a way forward. However, as long as the British Government keeps asking for the EU to deliver the impossible - every time a concession or a flexibility is shown, the British Government looks for more and more - and if that continues to be the approach, I think this negotiation will run out of road. While there is a window for compromise, certainly from the EU side, I hope the British Government will see the sense in negotiating in a way that is robust but which will not trigger Article 16, instead looking to settle on a sensible agreement and a way forward. The parties in Northern Ireland could do with that as opposed to the alternative, which is tension between Dublin and London, tension between London and Brussels and the unfortunately polarising impact of that on politics in Northern Ireland, where there is already significant tension within the Executive and the Assembly as we lead into elections next year.

There is a lot at stake. I listened with interest to former Prime Minister John Major expressing his concern in a very forthright way over the weekend. I do not disagree with anything he said. When the British and Irish Governments do not act in partnership, it generally results in bad outcomes impacting Northern Ireland. Whether on legacy or on the protocol, I hope the British Government will seek a partnership approach rather than an alternative to that, which is not good for anybody. The British Government should not underestimate the EU's resolve or the EU solidarity in the context of the impact on Ireland of the decisions the British Government makes. That is much as I will say about the matter.