Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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The time in which we live now begs all of us to be strongly supportive of our stance. Regardless of politics, we have to be strongly supportive of that stance. If we move away from it, we are in serious trouble.

I wish to acknowledge the situation of Irish fishing. There will be a problem in that sector and with the Common Agricultural Policy as well. They will be resolved. The CAP problem has to be resolved. There is a big population in Europe amounting to 500 million people and they have to eat.

If somebody decides to trade that off against a car, people cannot eat the car no matter how hungry they are. That should not be done.

The security issue needs to be dealt with. We have become more dependent on our neighbours for security as time has passed and we cannot have it both ways. We need to enable our Defence Forces to be upgraded and trained in line with the best available in Europe, which would not be a breach of our neutrality. Alternatively, will we rely on the British Government to come to our aid in the case of a terrorist attack? I would not be happy about that. We need to recognise that, unfortunately, for security reasons, we need to upgrade our Defence Forces in order that they can understand their colleagues in Europe in the event of a security breach.

The stance adopted by the Taoiseach and Mr. Barnier in respect of the Border still stands and we should not presume that there will be any backing off from that. If we do back away from it, we will have made a serious negotiating error.

On the urban-rural divide, people tend to support their own bailiwicks. As matters progress, there is a great need for all European politicians to represent the people of Europe and not one sector against another, one village against the next or one country against another. They need to provide universal representation. We are either a European Union or we are not. If we want to go in different directions, we can do that but it will be at our own cost.