John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine's description of having friends in court and his comments on the importance of the UK market and what its approach might be are in stark contrast to some of the language being used by other European member states in respect of Britain. The Government should be encouraged to take the line that the Minister has outlined because Britain, as our largest trading partner, needs to be on our side in the context of the negotiations and in understanding Northern Ireland and the Irish position. It would be wrong of us to join with Europe in its condemnation of Britain or in the strong language that was used in the earlier part of the discussion regarding Brexit and the process.

If one goes back to the Brexit vote, the course of that campaign and the analysis afterwards clearly showed that people in Britain were fed up of Europe. They had a belief that there was too much interference from Europe, they wanted their own sovereignty to be front and centre and their own self-interest to be addressed. Essentially, that is what the UK is going to do. Britain is going to ignore most of the other countries and is going to look after its own self-interest. That is what this is about. It would seem that the political system in Ireland has not learned from that process.

I am in favour of Europe. I am in favour of most of what is done out there. I do not like, however, how it is being controlled from the centre. I do not like being told what we should and should not do. I believe that we are Irish people first - men and women. After that we are European. In order to be worthwhile in Europe, we should hold to the dynamic of defending the country, its heritage, traditions, trade and so on. At the same time, that does not mean that we are not good Europeans. I have to go back to being a good European to see what happened to us, because the late Brian Lenihan was a good European when he went out there to negotiate and was told that financial bombs would go off in Dublin if we were to burn the bondholders. This country had to take on a significant amount of debt because of the self-interest of the big players within Europe. French and German bondholders were interested in nothing else but their bonds and their financial input. Europe responded to that, and penalised a small country like ours by supporting their policy of not burning the bondholders and supporting the pillar banks. When we look back, we realise that we got very little - and very little support - for being good Europeans and swallowing that pill. I wonder how strong we will now be in the context of that conversation, or that analysis, with Europe in terms of either being good Europeans and defending our self-interest, or vice versa.

It is my strong belief that if we do not enter into these negotiations with a full understanding of the impact of Brexit on our economy and the need for Europe to support us, we will not get the best deal possible.

I have heard Ministers in the past outline how Brexit is going to impact their particular area, be it agriculture as the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, outlined, tourism, transport or any other area. However, I am not convinced that work is being done. I understand groundwork has to be done first, foundations have to be laid and we build on that. Businesses want to know what the Government is doing about the worst case scenario for small businesses in this country. They have not heard a single word about that. Large and small businesses are going to be negatively impacted by Brexit. That negative impact will be far greater if we are not prepared.

The Government has said that we are prepared to canvass and take on the relocation of financial services from Britain to Ireland. That has not happened. The financial services are relocating to countries other than Ireland. We have so far failed the very first test in terms of benefiting from Brexit in the financial services sector.

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