Mr. Maro? ?efovi:

I thank Deputy Haughey for his kind words. After we conclude the agreement, and when we will look at the whole process with our team, I believe that as public officials and civil servants, we will very rarely have had such a sense of accomplishment and the feeling that we did something that is very important, that is right and good, and which will really affect the daily lives of the people in Northern Ireland and also in Ireland on the whole island. There has been a lot of effort and energy put in.

We benefited a lot from the trust and support from Ireland and I would like to thank you for that. On the system which is set up and the structure of the committees, we have committees working under the withdrawal agreement, and there is one very important specialised committee which will meet the day after tomorrow. It will be a back-to-back, whole-day session where our teams will go through the timeline, and all the commitments and undertakings that have been agreed to in the Windsor Framework in great detail. As one can imagine the Windsor Framework is a document underpinned by a lot of additional legal documents so it is a very thorough and rather thick document. Our teams will go through all the documents to see what they mean from the perspective of the timeline, and what the concrete steps and measures that have to be undertaken are by both sides.

The immediate priorities from our side are to present new legislative proposals for medicines; sanitary and phytosanitary controls; and also for tariff, freight and quota setting with steel. This is ongoing and on the UK side an example I will use is the work on making sure our access to the IT system is as seamless as possible and that there is proper information. We gave our British partners certain accommodations to make sure that once we received the data from the IT system that we can process it, use our risk analysing tools, and that the system will work properly. These are a few examples of what we are working on right now. The whole Windsor Framework and all the steps will have to be undertaken will be the work clearly for this year but also for the beginning of next year, depending on how all these issues are sequenced.

It is also important for the committee to know that we agreed with the UK that all of these arrangements have to be balanced. We will proceed in a way that the UK will deliver on the safeguards and we will deliver on the necessary facilitation. This is how the work is being prepared, structured, and how we will continue. To date, what also might be of interest to the committee is the fact that we are opening a new chapter. The trade and co-operation agreement is very important, and to highlight how massive our relationship is with the UK and how important this work is the fact that there are 19 committees or sub-committees under the partnership council. They are structured along different lines of co-operation, and different sectors where we need to work together. I think the work between the teams and experts is good. As one can imagine the road has been a little bumpy over the past two years because we had ongoing negotiations, unilateral elections, and it all had an impact on the work on other structures. It is now closed, it is over, and as you say on your island it is water under the bridge. We now want to focus on the future and on making sure our teams working in the committees work as smoothly as possible to minimise problems and to bring only the issues where it is difficult to find solutions to the political level. We believe that through the diligent work of our experts and technical teams we can ensure the relationship between the EU and the UK because we are very big trading partners, allies and eternal neighbours who share the same values. The potential for co-operation is huge so that it be managed to the satisfaction of both parties.

When it comes to the parliamentary dimension of the co-operation, we had the first meetings of the general assemblies of the European and UK Parliaments. There were quite dynamic debates on both occasions. I participated in both, in Brussels and also in London. It is good to have a parliamentary dimension to this relationship so I am sure that this will continue. We will now focus very much on the proper implementation of the agreements and also on the future.

When it comes to the geographical protection and the question of the protection of Irish whiskey, this is a quite technical question and I know our team is working on it. I can provide greater detail and a proper answer in writing, rather than say something in the shortterm which will then have to be adjusted. If there is need to go into greater detail for the Irish Whiskey Association representative we will be ready for that.