Mr. Mark Durkan:

I thank the Minister for his words, not just his opening presentation but also his answers to questions raised. I also thank him for all of the work he undertakes.

There is concern that, in the post-referendum situation, too many of us are being asked to drift along and rely on assurances from British Ministers that there will not be any hard borders, that they will respect the Good Friday Agreement and so on, in circumstances where it is quite clear that they have no plan, map or satellite navigation system for where they want to go. Just tailgating on those sorts of assurances is not good enough. Like other members, including Senator Feighan and Deputy Brendan Smith, I believe we must see broader bandwidth regarding where we go from here in terms of properly protecting and upholding the Good Friday Agreement, as well as minimising and mitigating the adverse impact of the Brexit decision on the island as a whole. That means we need a wider forum. It is not enough to rely on whatever good exchanges take place inside the North-South Ministerial Council because it has a limited remit and is subject to veto mechanisms. We were told today about protocols that prevented a document prepared by the Civil Service in the North assessing the adverse impact of Brexit from being published. It could not be published because people were able to use the veto mechanism to which I refer.

That mechanism also extends to the work of the North-South Ministerial Council, both to its agenda and any outcomes. In circumstances where that veto is held by people who campaigned in a cavalier way for Brexit, and with complete disregard for its wider implications, many of us are under-assured when we are told that much of this can be taken care of by the North-South Ministerial Council. We need to ensure, therefore, that there are broader channels of consideration, and I do not just mean party political involvement. There needs to be key sectoral inputs and considerations on a North-South basis.

In that regard, I hope the Irish Government would not be curtailed by the reaction to the Taoiseach's remarks in Glenties in making very clear that any new EU-UK treaty catering for Brexit must make explicit provision in respect of Irish unity, and that in the event of people in Ireland voting for a United Ireland there would be no question mark over new terms having to be negotiated for the North to come in to a United Ireland and into the EU or new terms having to be negotiated for the South as well. It is not enough to rely on the precedent of Germany because many people are saying we are in different circumstances and that said precedent would not be invoked. We cannot say there would not be a problem. We have to deal with it in terms that explicitly relate to the Good Friday Agreement because unless they are assured it is directly and specifically to do with the Good Friday Agreement, other countries elsewhere in Europe will be wary of the precedent of regions being able to member state "shop or hop" in that regard. That is why explicit and unique provision has to be made. We cannot be overly sensitive to the complaints we might hear from some Unionist politicians when we make that point. Equally, we cannot be too sensitive to some of the sensitivities I hear from some English colleagues in the House of Commons when we make these points. The latter will say that they do not want to discuss the matter because Scotland will insist on something being negotiated to allow it be able to come in or that, in the event of independence, it will have a smooth path to membership.

We must take care of our interests and principles as mandated by people when they voted, North and South, for the Good Friday Agreement. We have to put those at a premium. The Irish Government has a bigger responsibility, given the terms of the new Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, in respect of protecting the Good Friday Agreement's provisions in those sorts of areas than has the British Government. There are comments we will need to hear from the Irish Government in respect of its singular role as a guarantor of the Agreement rather than us just hearing that there will be commitments by the two Governments as co-guarantors.

In respect of the hard border issue, that might be an easy issue to deal with because everybody seems to be saying that they are opposed to a hard border or that nobody wants it. However, as the Minister rightly said, some of that may not be entirely in our own hands, depending on decisions that are made elsewhere or by others in the EU. Even if we avoid what people are calling a hard border - a physical customs post - the fact is that there will be a danger of incipient "borderism" because the more we have a difference of standards and the less commonality around regulations, standards and laws, the more some people will make it their business to enforce those differences and seek them to be policed, even by businesses, groups and individuals. It is that level of incipient borderism about which many people are concerned. We should not underestimate that it exists, even in the current context.

One need only look at what happens to wedding cars crossing the Border in some parts of the country to see that borderism exists, even under the current regime. We are told that there will be no agenda for borderism and that everything will work smoothly under the Agreement. There was an element of borderism in recent times when the haulage levy was introduced in the North by the current Minister for immigration, who did not seem to care about the Good Friday Agreement and who argued that his Government's policies required him to act in a way that did not treat people in Northern Ireland differently from their counterparts anywhere else. I mention that as an example of where people apply the policies they have in Great Britain and extend them equally to Northern Ireland. In recent times, the British Government has increasingly spoken about immigration and terrorism together. We saw it in Theresa May's statement after the G20 summit, one section of which was headed "immigration and terrorism". I accept that another word was thrown in there. The word "refugees" was used in the text but not in the heading. The Westminster Government is increasingly talking about immigration and terrorism together and using the same instruments to deal with them.

We should remember that terrorism legislation passed in the Westminster Parliament in recent years makes specific provisions about the Border area in Northern Ireland. The power of police or anybody with constabulary powers to seize a passport at airports or ports, or within a mile of airports or ports, applies specifically to any area within a mile of the land border in Northern Ireland. When James Brokenshire was introducing this legislation as the Minister responsible for it, he clarified for me that it applies to anywhere within a mile as the crow flies. There is already pressure in the UK for that to be extended. People are asking why the use of these powers should be limited to within a mile of ports and airports and calling for the relevant area to be extended. Although this is supposedly a terrorism measure, we have to fear that the increasing tendency to address terrorism and immigration together in statements and in legislative terms could have implications for how the Border is treated that are not flashing on the radar at the moment. The point I am making is that those of us in Border areas who are dealing with these issues and listening to British Ministers when they are addressing their own colleagues, and not just when they are addressing audiences in Dublin or Northern Ireland, are aware that such Ministers are not reliably showing the care and regard for the Good Friday Agreement that we would hope they would show for it. We have to take that care to ourselves.