Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of my party and the labour movement, I wish the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and all in this House a happy Europe Day. May we be "united in diversity," to quote the official motto of the European Union.

I welcome that the Government has finally produced a more comprehensive document on its approach to Brexit. It is well overdue, as others have stated, but unfortunately it is sadly lacking in policy specifics. It does not tell us anything we do not already know. For a 68-page document, eight pages of it consist of the Taoiseach's speech to the Institute of International and European Affairs, IIEA, another four pages consist of Government statements that have already been issued and two pages consist of previously issued EU statements. I could go on but I think the Taoiseach gets the point. Plenty of text has been produced, and much of it reproduced, but what we are doing right now to mitigate the damage of Brexit is not clear.

The UK has set its course and Theresa May and her party are seeking a strong mandate in the upcoming UK election. Judging by the polls, she seems set to secure such a mandate. To achieve what, we can only guess. My fear, judging by the language used in the artificial row with the EU last week, is that she is contriving a majority to focus on a hard Brexit. It would be a Brexit that would entail customs checks, tariff barriers, a bonfire of rights and an imperilling of the peace process. The soft options have already been taken off the agenda. Arguments about the final bill will distract many both in the United Kingdom and abroad from the substance of what Brexit will mean. That row ignores the fact that much of the bill that is now being focused on and talked about consists of payments the United Kingdom knows it will, as a member up to 2019, make in any event to the end of the current EU budget round.

There is much we can do in the meantime, however. A poor deal for the UK will, in my judgment, be a bad deal for Ireland. There are important principles at stake. Being a member of the European Union comes with responsibilities but also, as we know and as the Irish people have endorsed in an opinion poll finding today, strong benefits. As Colm McCarthy wrote in the Sunday Independentat the weekend, we in Ireland must now be focused on damage limitation. Nearly a year on from the referendum and six weeks since the triggering of Article 50, it is incredible that my party, the Labour Party, is the only political grouping to have put forward practical solutions and proposals - not analysis, but specific action lines.

The problems we face are clear - the Taoiseach has outlined the challenges yet again in his contribution tonight - and relate to investment, agriculture, transport and access to markets, the future of cross-Border bodies, the fallout for workers on both sides of the Border and the issue of the common travel area, which obviously means much more than simply travel. We are the only party to have put forward specific actions relating to these matters. The severity of what will result from Brexit may not be clear. It will obviously depend on the final deal achieved. However, the sectors that will be distressed are already known. Many of them were outlined in the Taoiseach's contribution tonight.

It is now time for Ireland to start putting in place our defence mechanisms, that is, not talking about them but putting the measures in place now. The Taoiseach has told the House yet again that the Government will soon bring forward a paper focused on the economic and business implications of Brexit. I look forward to seeing it and hope that it will take on board many of our proposals on trade, investment and jobs and the 20 key action points that we have laid out.

I welcome that some of them, such as those focused on Northern Ireland, have been achieved by the Government. The recognition of the Good Friday Agreement and the future possibility of a shared united Ireland are important but also obvious. The text of the negotiation guidelines rightly recognises the issues we face on this island. However, as those larger existential questions are addressed, there is still a need for a focus on our future plans. In particular, we have called for a new protocol to be included in the EU treaties to recognise the special relationship on this island and the special status of Northern Ireland. Such a protocol would copperfasten the declaration of the EU 27 regarding a united Ireland. It should also highlight the deep trade and political, social and economic ties that lie between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Another proposal we have put forward is that there is an opportunity to look now at the future of cross-Border bodies and not just the six we currently have but those we could create where integration is highly advanced in areas like animal welfare, health care, the energy market, agrifood supply chains, education and transport. For example, the dairy market operates as though no Border exists. The ESB owns the electricity grid in Northern Ireland. Public rail and bus services operate across the Border and future infrastructure projects like the A5 or the high-speed rail link require deep integration that could be sundered by Brexit. New bodies, established with the support of the United Kingdom and the European Union, would help address these problems. We may have to face up to these things in the event of the wrong decisions being made in the negotiations.

We have also called for a transitional trade agreement and it appears as though many have now woken up to the reality of the future trading relationship that will exist with a negotiated settlement. It could take a decade to put a comprehensive trade deal in place between the European Union and the United Kingdom.

In the meantime, life will continue but we face the prospect of customs and other barriers, the loss of the land bridge to the Continent through the UK and infrastructural bottlenecks on our roads and at our ports.

For many months, the Labour Party has been calling for changes to the Stability and Growth Pact fiscal rules. We will debate that further tonight but we have followed that call with action, and the Party of European Socialists has established a working group, at my request, to bring forward actions in this regard. I ask now that the Taoiseach use his influence within the European People's Party - I know he has a leaders' meeting coming up this week - to follow suit and begin to modify the stability and growth rules to allow for the sort of investment we need and for the mitigation, for example, of competition rules and state-aid rules that we will need to prepare ourselves for Brexit. Our economy is growing, as is our population. We need to invest. We need to Brexit-proof our economy. We need the extra money that we will talk about later.

We need revised regional action plans for jobs. The ones the Taoiseach and I drew up together in 2015 are already out of date. The economic impact of Brexit will wreak havoc in many sectors, particularly those that are reliant on the UK market for exports. This will impact specifically on regions as well as on economic sectors on this island. That is why we proposed a €250 million trade adjustment fund. We believe Brexit warrants the suspension of state-aid rules for SMEs for a period of two years.

Of course, the devil will be in the detail and the detail of any trade deal or transitional arrangement will determine the specificity of the funds required. That is why we have said the State needs now to forge new alliances in Europe, particularly with countries of similar size to Ireland. I welcome the series of meetings the Taoiseach has had with the Dutch, the Danish, the Croatians and others. Obviously, we need to do more. An early warning system that we have set out needs to be put in place and we must examine how current EU supports can be deployed, including the European globalisation adjustment fund, to make it a specific Brexit-proof fund. There is so much we need to do that we have set out and upon which we now need to act.

The last point we make in our policy document is on the future of the English language in the EU. As we saw from the somewhat flippant remarks of the President of the Commission, this is not a moot point. We need to have this copper-fastened, with a clear declaration that English will remain a working language of the EU, while obviously protecting the designation of Irish. We have an awful lot to do - we know that. We will work in tandem to do it but we need to move beyond planning and towards concrete action.

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