Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am concerned by that. The longer we go on without agreed wording on the Border, the more it becomes one of many legitimate priorities across the EU member states. The talks were set up to ensure we could get agreement on a reasonably small number of important issues, including for us the Border in phase 1, before agreeing a transition and moving to phase 2. It was recognised right at the start that this was going to be incredibly difficult. We have the December agreement. The EU and UK sides immediately had different views of it, however. We had the EU say this was its interpretation and legal wording. I agree with the Tánaiste that it was a fair representation by the EU. However, we must be cognisant that it has been rejected emphatically by the UK.

The concern is that this should have been closed off by now, before moving on to phase 2. Now, many of our neighbours - our friends and our allies - have legitimate interests as well. We could get to a point in October where hundreds of billions of euro of trade, the future relationship between the UK and Ireland is being held up, and there might be reasonable pressure from our neighbours to water it down.

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