David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests to this meeting. As Senator Gavan has just said, the word chaos has been used. Tá sé uafásach, gan dabht. I have been alarmed over this for a long time. It has been obscured by the fog of Covid-19 but this is just horrific. There is no other way to describe it. A deal would be terrible but a no-deal outcome would be absolutely unbearable.

I am struck by a lot of what has been said here, including the fact that 42% of companies feel they are not prepared. How can any company be prepared when it does not know what to prepare for? The fact that more than 40% of companies are not engaged is quite concerning. I agree that social dialogue is hugely important, as argued by all of the contributors this morning. I was struck by what the representatives from Border Communities Against Brexit said about the level of integration across the Border of families, communities, sports teams, schools and community groups being largely misunderstood and underestimated. That is an extremely powerful statement and Brexit has the potential to impact in a very negative way.

I know that Ministers and officials across all Departments have been working extremely hard on this for quite a while. They are as frustrated as anyone else at the lack of clarity at this stage, with only a small number of days remaining until 1 January. The transport of goods across the land bridge is one issue of major concern. Some efforts have been made to develop direct links to the Continent. A lot of our exports go to the UK but the importance of the back haul from Europe should not be underestimated. Many companies use the land bridge and bring goods back into the UK from Europe as a way of financing their operations. How might that be affected? We do not know because if there is a deal, we do not know what will it be like. I am not sure what the Government here can do but I do agree that workers and companies need support.

The one word that came through in all of the presentations was uncertainty. The lack of clarity at this very late stage is difficult and it is very hard to know what questions to ask of our witnesses. We are operating in a kind of vacuum and do not know what kind of outcome will present itself. I hope that some agreement is reached but if not, what will the WTO rules mean?