Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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The Minister of State and I will answer the questions between us.

We must be very clear at the outset that we cannot answer many of the questions relating to Brexit. There are a lot of hypothetical questions such as what happens if it is a disorderly or orderly Brexit. Regardless of which it is, this legislation will still be needed. We will still need to change the legislation either way.

Deputy Thomas Byrne asked why students from Northern Ireland will not be treated the same as French or Spanish students. Part of the Brexit deal between the European Union and the UK, which was accepted at Westminster, was that there would be provision within the backstop to ensure that there would be singular alignment. That was not accepted by the UK. Discussions are ongoing as to where that will take us. Central to what we are doing here is the protection of the common travel area. That is sacrosanct in every piece of work we do, whether it is on a North-South or east-west basis. The key mechanism for that is the Good Friday Agreement. At all times, whether it was Declan Kelleher and his colleagues in Brussels or officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Good Friday Agreement had to be protected in all its parts. Part of that was the flow of students, wherever they wanted to study, workers' mobility and so on. We are in a position where we do not know what will happen in the next six weeks. We must be vigilant but one thing is sure, as someone who comes from Donegal, we cannot contemplate going back after the great work that has been done over the past 20 years with communities coming together. Education has been an integral part of that. It could be students who can now do a joint course between Queens University Belfast and LyIT, Letterkenny Institute of Technology, or students being able to do a combined course between the Ulster University in its Magee campus in Derry and Letterkenny. These are practical examples of education transcending any kind of physical border. Our duty is to ensure that we protect this.