Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank all of the witnesses for joining us, albeit virtually, at this meeting. I look forward to us being able to engage in person in London or Dublin in due course and I hope, as the Chairman said, yesterday's news might get us a little bit closer to that.

I want to touch on a couple of issues as we have laid out. I want to start on the Internal Market Bill. While the announcement yesterday was welcome, I do not think it was necessarily as big a deal as some people were making out. I am interested to hear the witnesses' take on when we can expect the detail on how the British Government will implement the full terms of the protocol, what they expect to feed in, and what knock-on effect it would have, not just for North-South or east-west relations as it pertains to this island but also on how it will impact on the devolved nations throughout the United Kingdom, and I am particularly interested to hear from Dr. Whitford and Mr. Kinnock in that regard.

Moving on to something more general, whatever happens come 31 December relations will change greatly. Mr. Benn and Mr. Mills have exchanged a number of times through these committees on the opportunity for bilateral relations and Anglo-Irish relations, and how as parliamentarians, leaving aside governments' responsibility, we can maximise the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement across all our Parliaments to ensure we do not let go of the level of co-operation that is there between the UK and Ireland that, sadly, is being taken away by Brexit.

I will pick on the witnesses individually. Talks are in the ether in Brussels and certainly it is my opinion and, I assume, the opinion of my colleagues that a deal is in everybody's interests, especially those of Ireland and the UK. From the point of view of the witnesses, do they expect a deal? Do they hope for a deal? Where do they believe the shape of a deal may appear in the coming days? I thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee and I look forward to hearing from them.