Lord Jay of Ewelme:

I will make a couple of points in response to Deputy Richmond and then I will pass it around. On the length of time of this committee, we have definitely been appointed until the end of 2022. There will then be a review on whether we should continue beyond that. That is the answer to that question.

I will make another point about contact. This goes back a little to my background, but I attended something like 15 European Council meetings in a row as a senior official in the Foreign Office. From the time of Mrs. Thatcher through to that of Tony Blair, on at least half of those occasions the most important thing was not the discussion of European Union issues but the bilateral discussion between the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach. One of the things we need to do now, in a sense, is to replace those sorts of informal, completely below the radar discussions which happened automatically every three to six months often without anybody knowing about them. That is an issue for all of us.

I am glad to see that almost every member of the committee has got their hand up. I will start with Baroness O'Loan.