Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the presentation and for the invite. Fianna Fáil and I will work to hold the Minister to account where we do not believe the Government is doing enough. We have every intention of working with the Minister, where we can, to try to get Ireland ready for Brexit and to turn it into an opportunity where possible.

At the start of a new Dáil term, with the German election just over and having heard Prime Minister May's speech in Florence, it is a good time for Ireland to step back and ask what is at stake for the country when it comes to Brexit. I will touch on three issues. First and foremost, jobs are at stake. Ireland's small and medium enterprises, SMEs, export 40% of their goods and services to the UK. Critically, those exports represent half of the export-related jobs in the State. Ireland's SME sector exports only one tenth of our country's exports, because the multinational sector is so big, but it employs the same number of people. There are as many jobs at risk from Brexit in our indigenous sector as are employed in the entire multinational arena in Ireland. Certain sectors, obviously, are especially at risk, such as tourism, basic metals, textiles and more. Agrifood is more exposed, as we know, than any other sector given that the beef and dairy areas are so closely linked to the UK market, east-west and North-South. Major disruptions such as the WTO tariffs pose what many describe as an existential threat to those sectors. Many jobs are at stake, particularly outside the main urban centres. Brexit will hit rural Ireland harder than it will hit urban Ireland and it poses a higher risk for jobs there.

Northern Ireland issues are also at stake. Brexit is already pulling the people of Northern Ireland out of the European Union. The EU identity is very important to both communities, but it is particularly important to the nationalist community. They live within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, but as part of their identity they can say they are citizens and participants in the European Union. A senior security officer in Northern Ireland recently gave me his opinion on the potential situation of the nationalist population being pulled out of the EU against its will, combined with the potential for a hard border. While we will all work to make sure a hard border does not happen, should it happen at the same time that the nationalist community feels that it is being pulled out of the European Union, the community will feel that a fence is being built around them. This, in the opinion of the security officer, poses a material threat to the peace process and could see a return to violence through the radicalisation of younger disaffected members of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.

We do not talk much about the funding for public services also being put at stake by Brexit. How is Brexit linked to health care, housing and education in Ireland? Obviously the €62 billion of trade we do east-west and North-South, and the related jobs, creates very serious Exchequer revenues. Brexit will affect that trade to some extent and it will affect Exchequer revenues. At the same time, we will have to invest in infrastructure related to Brexit-proofing the State. Both of these combined will put serious pressure on Exchequer revenues in Ireland.

The referendum in the UK took place 15 months ago. To give time for deliberation, the proposal needs to be in place in about 12 months' time. To date, progress and negotiations have been slow. I, and many people, expect the Commission to recommend that the EU does not move to the next phase of the negotiations until at least December, slowing down the process again. Progress, however, is not just slow in Brussels. I believe that progress has been far too slow in domestic preparations in getting Ireland ready for Brexit. This is something that we can do.

The Government and our diplomats deserve great credit for the diplomacy we have seen between Dublin and Brussels. The common travel area is being accepted all around. It is critically important and it may not have happened. It is easy for us to say that we would always have got that - perhaps we would and perhaps we would not - but the Government deserves credit for putting it front and centre.

Northern Ireland Issues have also been put front and centre. Again, perhaps this would have happened anyway, and perhaps it would not, but certainly everything I have heard from Brussels, London and Dublin is that the Government and Ireland's diplomatic corps have done well in putting the interests of Ireland, including the common travel area, front and centre in the first phase of negotiations. I want to recognise that fact.

While the Government has done well in that respect, I believe it has failed in other critical areas. East-west negotiations have been stressed, and I would say this is partly due to some unnecessarily bombastic proclamations by the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, at press conferences. I have been to London recently and they do not help. Diplomacy means we need to work with our friends. We need to have honest and tough conversations with them, but that sort of bombast is not useful. I do not believe that North-South diplomacy has worked well. We have been waiting since 2011 for a paper on reinvigorating the North-South institutions. They have not been functioning but we still await that paper. We must have a reinvigoration of the North-South and the east-west institutions as quickly as possible.

Contingency planning has not started yet, such as making sure there is a back-up energy legal framework should there be a disorderly exit. The Minister confirmed in the Chamber last week that the committees were meeting for the first time this week. It is 15 months since the Brexit vote. It is not good enough that the committees are meeting only now, for the first time, for contingency planning. I have previously said to the Minister, in the House and privately, that domestic work to support our industry has been lacking. Enterprise Ireland is working with its clients but there are many more people who work in Ireland than Enterprise Ireland clients. What is a company meant to do with a €5,000 Brexit preparation grant? With the threat facing the agrifood sector, Bord Bia was allowed to hire three people this year. IDA Ireland was given permission to hire ten people. At the start of 2017, it had hired one person and the Taoiseach has confirmed to me in the House that this figure has gone up to four. This is not demonstrating a sense of urgency. Ireland has great State agencies but they clearly are not operating on Brexit at the level they need to be.

Nobody is engaging with farmers. I attended the National Ploughing Championships last week. I was there to ask farmers and their representatives what they were doing on Brexit, how are they getting ready, how the Government is engaging with them, what supports are being put in place and if the Government is helping farmers to think about the French, German, Austrian, Italian and Spanish markets. It will take farmers several years to grow into those markets. The answer, pretty much all around, was "No".

The Government is not engaging with the tourism industry.

Tourist numbers are up, which is fantastic, but our biggest market by a country mile is the UK from which, as we all know, the figures are down. No one is working with hoteliers and those running bed and breakfast accommodation or the tourism sector in Wicklow, Cork or elsewhere to say how we can start to prepare for this. No one is working with the fishing industry. I met members of the British Government approximately two weeks ago. I put it to them that they were looking at taking some of their territorial waters back and, obviously, leaving the Common Fisheries Policy. The answer was "Yes". That poses an existential risk to our fishing industry as the Minister and I both know. Nevertheless, if one asks people in the fishing industry if anyone is helping them start to get ready, the answer is "No". No one is engaging with small and medium enterprises beyond what Enterprise Ireland is doing. I put it to the Minister that it is not enough. It is not that the time for words is over; there must be more words and diplomacy, but the time for action in our own domestic preparations for this must start.

As we all know, Brexit is not happening on its own. It is a threat from the east. To the west, we have a protectionist USA and to the south east, we have the common consolidated corporate tax base, CCCTB, and all sorts of new things going on in Europe. We face threats on multiple fronts at the same time. I put it to the Minister that on Brexit, risk mitigation is not enough. We need to use it as a catalyst to do something new. In the early 1960s, Lemass and Whitaker worked together on the first programme for economic expansion, which has served all of us well for decades. It has not all been perfect and some of our friends in the Chamber might say there have been problems with globalisation. While I agree, it has worked well for us. Now is the time for a second programme for economic expansion. There is a great deal of talk about India and China, which is fine, but our product and service offering is ripe for Europe into which we have very low market penetration.

If we are going to do this, we will need a national programme. It is not enough to tinker around the edges. The entire Government budget for Brexit this year was €5 million. Fianna Fáil wants to discuss a brave programme for economic expansion, which acknowledges that while we have been well served by the Anglo-Saxon world for many years and will continue to work and trade with it, it is time for us to move beyond it. That will require adaptation funding, the relaxation of State supports and the upgrading of capabilities across our sectors. That is what Fianna Fáil wants to see domestically in response to the threats from Brexit, the USA and some of what is happening in Europe.

See this speech in context