Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach. I am conscious that Mr. Rajoy is a colleague of the Taoiseach in the European People's Party. It seems to me, given the issues and views he has continually expressed on Catalonia, that Spain will be strategically one of the very strongest advocates for the hardest Brexit possible to serve as a warning to regions like Catalonia that if they leave the comfort of Spain as a single country in a federal system, it will be pretty cold outside. In that context, what is the Taoiseach's assessment of what the stance of Spain will be? All the indicators, from the information available in the media about the Spanish status and the recent statement about Catalonia, are that Spain will be lining up with quite a few others for a hard Brexit. As the Prime Minister is a colleague of the Taoiseach in the European People's Party, which is a very conservative organisation, perhaps the Taoiseach can give us some insight. At the end of the day, there will have to be some very difficult negotiations. We are just not getting any sense of how the Taoiseach is strategically preparing for those negotiations.

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