Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his detailed reply and I welcome his strong statements. I do not for one second doubt the Minister's absolute commitment and hard work in this area. I sincerely hope that work will continue into the future. The Minister basically outlined again what we discussed at our meeting of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence last week and we will have another meeting during the course of next month specifically devoted to Brexit. That is very important.

Apart from that, there have been some unwelcome developments over the past few weeks from the Conservative Party in Britain. It has made several statements that, while not directly challenging the common travel area by name, undermine it by implication. I refer to a tweet from the Conservative Party that states "Brexit gives us an opportunity to get control of our borders but only if we get the negotiations right.". Broad and sweeping statements like this from the Tories are sending mixed signals, as many commentators see a clear and glaring conflict between the absolute commitment to "control our borders" while also supporting the common travel area, as EU citizens have the right to travel to Ireland. What is worrying is that the Secretary of State's party - the Tory Party - is more firmly committed to controlling the borders than positively maintaining the common travel area in its current operations. The Minister knows that with the common travel area we have heard references from British Government Ministers and others to keep it "as frictionless as possible" with "no return to borders of the past". Has the Secretary of State or the British Head of Government given to the Minister or the Taoiseach any indication of what is meant by those phrases?

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