Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with many of the previous speaker's comments. I accept her passion on this issue. It would have been great if her party had campaigned on Brexit in Northern Ireland. It would have been welcome, given the passion with which she has spoken about the issue this evening. Her party did not even register as a political entity to campaign in the referendum. If it had done so, the Deputy and her colleagues would have been able to express their views and fight for even more "Remain" votes.

We are heading into years of uncertainty. It is clear from how long it took to reach a trade deal with Canada that this process will take many years. I genuinely congratulate the Government on its diplomatic efforts. I would not necessarily say it has won, but it has secured elements of acknowledgement of Ireland's unique situation. We should acknowledge those small wins. The real win will be secured when we reach an agreement we can all live with.

I would like to take a different angle on this debate. I believe we need to discuss what our options as a country will be when the final outcome is known. In particular, I suggest we should have a conversation about whether the agreement that is eventually reached will need to be put to the Irish people for ratification. I do not think anyone here can predict where we will be at that point, what the outcome will be or whether a vote will be needed. I am not saying anyone has the answers, but we certainly need to discuss the possibility of a referendum. Article 50 has been triggered. We know the EU's initial negotiating principles. There is a spectrum of outcomes on where we could end up as regards Brexit. There could be a hard Border. Obviously, a fully negotiated agreement is what we want. The spectrum of outcomes I have mentioned will lead us to make a decision in order that we can ensure this is ratified.

We can be sure of three things. First, the agreement on leaving will have to be ratified by the European Council using qualified majority voting. Second, any such agreement will have to be passed by the European Parliament. As a former Member of the European Parliament, I expect that to happen, although it is not a foregone conclusion. Third, any deal will have to be agreed by each existing member state. We all know we have been here before. Many EU referendums have been held in this country since 1987. Every country has its own way of ratifying the accession of a new member state, for example. In this case, a member state is leaving the Union. The Labour Party has published a Brexit document that discusses the need to look at how all the EU treaties will affect this change. Substantial changes to EU treaties may be ratified by the Irish Government by means of an Act of both Houses of the Oireachtas. As we have seen before, there will need to be a referendum if a material change is proposed.

It is extremely unlikely that Brexit will result in a change to the EU treaties that will affect Ireland in such a way that we will not need to have a referendum. The UK is referred to approximately 120 times in EU treaties and protocols. Having listened to what the Tánaiste has said about a range of protocols, I am more convinced than ever that there is a strong possibility that any agreement will create new bodies or organisations to oversee the relationship between both parties - the UK and the EU - thereby again necessitating a referendum. I do not think anybody in the Oireachtas can say definitively that a referendum will be necessary. I am saying straight out that we need to discuss the possibility. We need to have it on our radar. We need to be prepared for it. I expect that myriad legal arguments will be presented as part of the legal debate about whether a referendum will be necessary.

I would like to help the Government by mentioning another component of this matter. We do not know where the legal debate will end up. We certainly should be putting it to our EU partners that there is a very strong likelihood of a referendum. Frankly, it is one of the biggest levers we have. The possibility that an agreement between the remaining EU member states and Britain would have to be put to a referendum of the Irish people should focus Mr. Barnier's mind during the negotiations.

Tactically, this is something we have to consider very strongly. We will need to have a referendum anyway. The Government should state this is a strong likelihood as a strategic, tactical and factual move. No one can tell me that somebody will not walk into the Supreme Court once an agreement has been reached and argue that, for various different reasons, it needs to be put to the people. There needs to be a discussion about whether we should be upfront about this.

I want to focus on some of the issues the Labour Party has highlighted in our perspective on Brexit. We were the only party to publish a paper on Brexit. The special status of Northern Ireland is a critical priority. We need to examine a range of other areas. My party believes that a new protocol on EU treaties will be necessary and we need to consider how that will happen in order to protect the common travel area with Britain and enshrine the Good Friday Agreement. Work on that needs to commence. The fiscal rules and Stability and Growth Pact are key issues that we need to lever in the negotiations in order to generate change and give us greater flexibility. We need that flexibility, given the unclear situation in which we find ourselves.

We need to ensure the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, is protected. The €115 billion received by Irish farmers annually must, as far as possible, be guaranteed in any post-Brexit adjustments to the EU budget. The UK currently contributes 12% of the EU budget, with a net contribution of €10.5 billion which will be lost post-Brexit. A 12% cut to CAP will be devastating for Irish farmers, as EU direct payments account for 65% of family farm incomes in Ireland. There needs to be a direct and real focus on that.

We need to consider transitional arrangements with Britain over the coming years before Brexit in order to prepare for it. Furthermore, an early warning system needs to be created to deal with the issues that will arise across industries as regards Brexit. This will help to prepare industries for Brexit. There are unknowns. This is virgin territory. Let us put an early warning system in place in order to find out what the issues are and deal with them as quickly as possible. We all know what happened to the mushroom industry.

Not alone will we have to deal with negative consequences, there could potentially be positive consequences. We were told how well the IFSC would do out of Brexit and now we can see the consequences. There are opportunities in other areas, including IT and standards, pharmaceuticals and education, particular third level education. There is capacity to promote this country as the only English language speaking country in the EU, which would provide an opportunity to foster significant investment in research. We need an early warning system or other system in place to foster ideas and opportunities and bring about capacity for warnings about the known or unknown impacts on industry.

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