Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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In terms of readiness, we are progressing this legislation, as a general Bill, as quickly as possible. The most recent publishing of it happened on 9 September. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, is leading the Bill through his Department. It is intended that the legislation would be enacted and ready before the end of the year and before the transition period ends.

As I mentioned in my opening comments, for me there are four key areas of this legislation. One of them is potentially new so a lot of the work has been done. A lot of the legislation had been prepared previously but it could not be enacted once the withdrawal agreement was approved. Taking into account that this is on a more permanent basis, the final work that needed to be done is being done. I cannot say where all the committees are, but at the moment other committees are engaging with other Ministers on their relevant piece of legislation. It is an attempt to move the Bill on as quickly as possible and ensure we are not doing things at the very last minute which, unfortunately, has often been the case with Brexit.

In terms of family law and recognition of divorces, anything that we do here, where there is not full agreement, is never going to be as good as what we had before. In particular, ensuring the manner in which we look at this, particularly around divorce, and the way that we have done it over the past 20 years does not change is extremely important.

In terms of family law and civil law matters, it is important to say that where there is not an agreement in place, we will have to revert to conventions of which both the UK and Ireland are members. Whether it is international maintenance recovery, the fallback instrument is the Hague maintenance convention of 2007.

In terms of UK and civil law in general, we will have to work to ensure that there is co-operation on four broad areas. We have international jurisdiction, enforcement of judgements based upon such jurisdiction rules, applicable law rules, judicial co-operation procedures such as arrangements for the service of documents, and specified EU procedures such as obtaining an order for payment for a pecuniary claim that is not contested. There are also other challenging areas around commercial litigation, the taking of evidence and insolvency. What we have has worked well. If we do not have an agreement in place, then the following will happen.

It will not enable us to work as seamlessly as we currently do, which is a challenge in itself. That highlights what Brexit means; it means change, and we have always said that, even with an agreement in place, work will have to be done, particularly in the area of law if we are falling back on conventions that might not allow us to work with the same ease that we do now.