Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is the assembly of the people and Members want reassurance from the person who is representing Ireland at the European Council meetings that we will not move to phase 2 until the interests of Ireland are fully secured. I want the Taoiseach to provide that reassurance. I welcome the Brexit stakeholder forum which is important, but it involves 60 or 70 people from agencies and so on. In advance of this most critical European Council meeting, I ask the Taoiseach to meet the leaders of parties represented in the House to discuss the strategy and see how we can play a part by talking to socialists and democrats within the European institutions in the case of the Labour Party and liberals in the case of Fianna Fáil and so on in order that we will have a collective, joined-up and manifestly united effort on this vital issue for Ireland. I ask the Taoiseach to agree to these two requests.

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