Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the first Battle of the Somme, which was the worst day in the history of the British Army. It will be marked throughout the United Kingdom and we will also mark it here. It is particularly significant in the lore and memory of the Unionist community of this island but Nationalists also have deep and important reasons to remember the Somme.

British involvement in European wars does not begin or end with the Somme. Agincourt, Waterloo and Dunkirk are all emotional reference points for the British people because Britain has always regarded Europe as a field of strategic concern for it, or at least it did until last Thursday. There is a terrible irony that in the week the Somme is remembered, the British people voted themselves out of the one organisation that has contributed most to the most peaceful period in European history. Europe is a continent where if we do not work together in common purpose, we tend to war together. It is precisely at the point when one becomes most complacent about war and the maintenance of peace that one imperils peace, but this is what has been done.

I said on Friday that I believed the vote of the British people was a tragedy and it seems no less a tragedy to me today, a number of days later.

The EU has served as an arena in which the relationship between this island and our sister island have improved immeasurably. Our equal membership of the EU and the additional prosperity that it has afforded the people of this State - alluded to by many of the contributors to the debate so far - has allowed us, for the first time in our history, to address and deal with the UK as an equal and not as a former colonial master. It has also afforded the UK to see this former colony as a true friend. That friendship was maintained despite the attempts of Sinn Féin and the IRA to set us apart and to construct a winner-takes-all relationship between our two states. It friendship persevered to the point at which we were able, by working together, to build a peace based on a settlement that was consented to by all the people of this island. It is no exaggeration to say that this new relationship has been dealt a body blow by the referendum outcome last Friday.

The Brexiteers have claimed that the common travel area will not be impacted upon by this decision. We certainly do not need any more physical barriers impeding the relationships North and South between the peoples on this island. Bluntly, we cannot tolerate such impediments. Likewise, we want our trading relationship with the UK, including Northern Ireland, not only to survive as it has done but to grow and to thrive further. There seems now to be an urgency on the part of some EU countries to proceed with the exit process immediately. I urge caution. We are the EU member state with most at stake here. If European values mean anything, they mean that right now, our voice - the voice of Ireland - must be heard by all of our colleagues in the European Union. As I say, we have major issues at stake and we need to get this right. It seems to me perverse that there is an impulse to deal not only urgently but, if one hears the voice and the tone of some, to deal harshly with the UK.

The EU should not be a pen in which the people are corralled for fear of the consequences of exiting. It is a partnership. It was built and envisaged as a true partnership which meets the needs and aspirations of all of our people. It is a partnership which must also listen and hear the changing views of people. As the leader of Fianna Fáil has said, there are peculiar circumstances around the historic antipathy to the EU that seems to abound in the UK. There is a relentless anti-European press, a nostalgia for the glory days of empire and a concern about immigration. That Britain achieved her greatness because of her openness seems lost on many voters. Despite her small size, she remains unduly influential in the world, both politically and culturally. I believe she has put that eminence at risk. I feel particularly sorry for young Britons, who voted emphatically to remain in the EU. They understand that if one is not moving forward in consort, one runs the risk of going backwards. They understand that the modern world is multi-layered, that the global economy is bigger than any single member state and that we can all be buffeted, big or small, by the waves of that multi-layered entity.

Whatever one's view on Scottish independence, it is difficult to deny that the events of the last week are of such magnitude that they justify looking again at the question that was determined by the Scottish people last year.

In like fashion, Sinn Féin has suggested we do likewise on this island. Again, it is not difficult to understand the reasons for this. While the British people have unilaterally cast aside one of the pillars of the settlement between the peoples of Britain and Ireland, it is not the primary pillar. The primary pillar remains the principle of consent. We have no evidence that a Border poll would change the status quo. The evidence is rather in the other direction. A lower Nationalist turnout in the referendum and a reduced Nationalist vote in the recent Northern Assembly elections are examples. I disagree that the sentiments of the Good Friday Agreement would be met by a numbers count. The thrust of years of discussion was to win people over to the view of a common Irish homeland, not to do a sectarian head count. We should not devalue the Border poll by an inopportune triggering of its use. We should look to preserve, in the first instance, the real and substantial progress we have made. We must not allow ourselves to slip backwards.

The priority must be to protect the political and institutional arrangements established by the Good Friday Agreement from potential instability. The status of both the UK and Ireland as EU member states is woven throughout the Agreement. One of the six North-South implementation bodies is the cross-Border Special EU Programmes Body, which I had the honour of co-chairing for the past five years. It brought substantial benefits to people on both sides of the Border. One of the functions of the North-South Ministerial Council is to consider the EU dimension of all relevant matters including the implementation of EU policies, programmes and proposals. We must ensure the transition for the institutions is as smooth and free from turbulence as we all, with our shared commitment and goodwill, can make it, and without breaking the sentiment, and progress we have made recently.

There will be some inevitable disruptions. We are an island off an island off the continent of Europe. Our geography dictates our policies. For example, we have all-island electricity market. The market is being re-designed to comply with EU rules for a pan-European market. Does it make sense to talk about a single European electricity given that our only physical connections are with a country that is about to leave the EU? The interconnectors will soon enough be importing and exporting power from the EU rather than trading it within a common European market. It is controversial enough to decide whether the North-South interconnector should be above or below ground. What do we do if it is re-classified not as a vital piece of EU infrastructure but as an export project? In both electricity and gas, our only physical connections are with a country that is leaving the EU. Post Brexit, the notion of adhering to policies designed for an internal EU market needs to be urgently re-examined.

Some in the UK are shocked by the scale of the economic reaction to the vote. Some had not realised the disconnect within their communities. There is a certain naivety because of the size of the UK economy which, until last week, was regarded as the fifth-largest economy in the world, albeit one with a sizeable current account deficit. It is disturbing that the warnings set out by the nation's most prominent economists were not just ignored, but ridiculed during the debate.

It is summed up in the dismissal by Michael Gove, MP, that "we've had enough of experts". While I believe there is a place where the role of the politician begins, there is a place where that begins and the policy expert's opinion ends. However, that should come after careful consideration of all the opinions, not dismissal of expert opinion out of hand. Let us not pretend that such nihilism is unique to the UK. Deputy Paul Murphy and his friends were at it again last week. Their appetite for chaos seems to have no end but they do this in the name of the left. They have much more in common with the nihilistic right than with genuine progressives.

It is too early to gauge the economic impact of this decision but I would urge caution about moving to amend our budgetary plans. We simply do not yet know what the impact will be. If we believe, as the statement by the Minister for Finance last week indicated, that the impact will be potentially negative, we should not race to fundamentally alter our plans for the budget, believed by the fiscal council to be contractionary next year, in the hope that having further contraction will provide us with greater shelter. Leaving aside fiscal space, that is largely an esoteric concept and difficult to calculate. I have been involved in this calculation for the past number of years. For example, between February and now, if we believe the figures published last week, the fiscal space has doubled in size. Our debt dynamics are miraculous given where we were as recently as five years ago. Our inflation dynamic is almost unhealthy, our housing policy needs stimulus, not contraction, and wages are slowly recovering from the most catastrophic economic shock we have ever experienced as a nation. We can afford, and absolutely need, an expansionary budget.

I referred earlier to the European response. It was disturbing to see the founder members of the Union gathering at a separate meeting last week. I welcome the Taoiseach's comments in his contribution, probably aimed at the same gathering, that these matters will be determined by the European Council acting in concert not by any select gathering of individual member states. On 21 January 1919, Members gathering at the First Dáil declared the desire that our country be ruled in accordance with the principles of liberty, equality, and justice for all, which they stated, "can alone can secure permanence of Government in the willing adhesion of the people". The EU has not secured the willing adhesion of the British people and there are fears the same result could be repeated elsewhere. It is time, surely, for Europe to realise that the best way for it to survive and, indeed, to continue to prosper, as most of us in this House want desperately to happen, is to serve its people more clearly and demonstrably. This means the return of economic growth to Europe. Many of the other concerns, including those about intra-Union migration, are predicated on fears about the impact that would have on jobs, housing and access to public services. The perception is that these migration patterns add further pressure to over-pressurised services suffering from an obsessive focus on European budgetary controls.

There is a balance to be achieved and we worked hard over the past five years to achieve that, which is a point I have made again and again. We need to ensure we broaden our response to economic underachievement. I know better than most in this House that a balance is required. Since he became president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has done his best but monetary stimulus is often not enough; a corresponding fiscal stimulus is required. This is something we need to debate and act on, lest further years of EU austerity damage the political fabric of the Union altogether and undermines the people's support for it. Likewise, Europe needs to recover its spirit. It was never intended to be merely an economic club, or a Single Market. Many of its great achievements are in the area of social policy and it is to that spirit of a social Europe, and a common European homeland where all of us can aspire through a spirit of cohesion to a better standard of living for ourselves and for our children, that we must return.

My party will be supportive of the Government’s efforts to work through this problem. This result may well have been out of our control but its potential impact on our people remains huge. Like others, I welcome the publication of the Government’s contingency strategy and the briefings the Government provided us in opposition last week. I agree we should seek to maximise whatever advantages that might accrue in what is otherwise a difficult challenge. However, if there is to be a new relationship between the UK and the Union arising from this decision, we must work to make one that meets the needs of the State and of everyone on the island of Ireland. It is critical at his juncture that what happens now makes the best of this bad lot for Irish citizens and the citizens of Europe. That is the complicated and challenging task that faces the Taoiseach and his Government. From the Labour Party perspective, it is one that we will support them to our best ability in achieving but we will also hold them to account.

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