Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I put it to the Minister that the detailed position paper which the Government published last week is a rehash of everything we have heard before. It is distinctly underwhelming with nothing new. It contains no ideas, no vision, no strategy, no budget, no timelines and no ambition. If this represents two years planning, as the Taoiseach has said, I greatly worry about the two years ahead of us.

Sectors such as the agrifood sector, the equine sector, the tourism sector and the small and medium-sized enterprise sector are already being affected and impacted by Brexit. These sectors and the hundreds of thousands of people employed in them cannot sit and wait for the Government to develop plans. They need help and support now. Now is the opportune time to help them. The agrifood industry has already lost €570 million due to sterling depreciation and jobs have already been lost in the sector, particularly in the mushroom industry. A recently published report by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has shown that 37% of those surveyed have already felt the negative repercussions on Brexit before it has even happened.

We are almost a year on from the referendum and the Government's wait and see approach and promise to develop plans in the future is simply unacceptable. We need to see action. This is the most important negotiation that we, as a country, will ever enter into. The UK is traditionally our largest trading partner and our countries trade approximately €1.2 billion in goods and services on a weekly basis. A hard Brexit could reduce that by as much as one third. I understand that officials from the Department of Finance told the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach that their projections suggest that a hard Brexit would result in a reduction in national wealth, a 30% decline in exports to the UK, a rise in unemployment and 40,000 fewer people in work after ten years. The Government needs to plan for this scenario now, not hope for the best. This message seems to have been lost on the Government.

The actual negotiations have not yet begun but at the moment, there is a significant gulf between the UK and the EU in terms of expectations. The risk of coming away with no deal would be bad for the UK, bad for the EU and particularly bad for Ireland. We, as a country, must work with our colleagues in the EU to secure an agreement that safeguards the EU project and prevents it from further fragmentation. Our future is definitively in the EU and we must ensure that we protect it.

Upholding the Good Friday Agreement, which is an international treaty, in full is a legal requirement and the only thing to do. The impact of Brexit on our education system will be significant. Deputy Byrne outlined the impact of Brexit on primary, secondary and third level education but as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Education and Skills, I want to put on record my concern about the 125,000 EU students in the UK, of which approximately 10% are from Ireland. There is a significant number of issues there. We need to minimise the damage Brexit could do to our agriculture, tourism and education system and maximise the potential benefits we could gain.

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