Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State made the point that we do not know what will happen with Brexit, but I put it to her that is exactly the point of having contingency plans. We should have contingency plans because we do not know what will happen, but we do not have them in place. I will give the Minister of State a brief example. I met the British under-aecretary for energy last week in London and he told me that Irish officials in the Department with responsibility for energy have been told not to engage with their British counterparts on developing a contingency plan for energy. As matters stand, if we reach a no-deal situation in 18 months' time, there is no legal framework by which the British can sell us energy, which means the lights would go off in Ireland. We need a contingency plan. We need a legal agreement in place, which the officials would have examined and the politicians would have reviewed and debated that provides that if we hit a worse case scenario where Britain tumbles out of the EU and there is no agreement on a single energy market that we can take out an agreement we have put in place in order that the lights can stay on here. That is what is at stake here. When can we expect to see some of this? Does the Minister of State agree that our officials need to engage with their UK counterparts to start putting emergency legal frameworks and contingency plans in place?

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