Ms Mairead McGuinness:

I thank the Senator for his comments and question. We need to be straight about this. There is frustration but equally there is pragmatism. We have good agreements and we want to implement them. We are trying to convince our UK colleagues that the best way to do this is at the table. I believe we can come to this position. We have had various waves where things get heated in the public space and we have to let them flow and then things settle back down again. The Senator is right to acknowledge and have a degree of sympathy for the unionist community. He summed up how perhaps they feel badly served. It is also important to stress that members of the unionist community supported Brexit. They did not support the Theresa May option. They believed Boris Johnson would deliver for them an agreement that would meet their needs. They find this is not now the case. We have to understand their sensitivity, and I do. I absolutely understand. I hope they will understand that what we are trying to do is solve the problems we have and find really good solutions to some of these problems.

I ask that rather than inflame a problem we need to deflate it and sort it. Perhaps there has been too much focusing on the difficult parts and ignoring the massive opportunities. Again, I would say the UK Government when it signed the agreement left it on the shelf and did not really interpret it or communicate it and did not put in the preparations needed in Northern Ireland to avoid the very situation we are in today. This goes back to the very famous line of getting Brexit done. If we do things in haste we will have regret and this is what we are now seeing. Certainly there is big regret throughout communities. We regret in the European Union that what is happening is actually happening. We do not need this. We need to work together.