Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy David Cullinane. We will take five minutes each.

I am very glad to hear the leader of Fianna Fáil reiterate the necessity for special status for the North of Ireland and to protect the peace agreements, to ensure no hard border and to keep the North inside the customs union and the Single Market. There are women in the Gallery from Ligoniel in north Belfast. The Taoiseach might wave to them. This is of specific concern to these fine women because they live in that part of Ireland. They are from a cross-community group and we have hosted them before. This is north Belfast at its finest and the women are very welcome.

I will not waste any of my time answering the histrionic nonsense. By all means, be tough on Russia and on Putin. The Government may please do that, and it may be tough on any other regime or Government that threatens international stability and violates international law. I might include the state of Israel in that. Above all, the Taoiseach's duty is to protect people here. The position from which we exert most authority and influence is our long-standing position of military neutrality. Despite Deputy Micheál Martin and Deputy Stephen Donnelly, who seems to be extraordinarily thin-skinned if we are to believe his leader, I think that is the case.

It is clear that the British Government maintains a very dismissive and arrogant attitude towards Ireland when it comes to Brexit. This has been the case from the beginning. Its attitude threatens the island, North to South, and might in fact imperil relationships - not least commercial and trading relationships - east to west between Ireland and Britain. The hard Tory Brexiteers just want Brexit at any cost and they are becoming increasingly irresponsible in their rhetoric in that regard.

We know a backstop was negotiated in December. The Taoiseach called it cast-iron, bulletproof and so on. The Tories moved to dismiss that and to say they were opposed to it. They have not put an alternative backstop on the table. We know from speaking to the European authorities and from interactions with the Taoiseach and the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, that the backstop is the bottom line. The British cannot come forward with something less than that and imagine it will fly. Also here, the Taoiseach's message is that the preference is for a wider trade arrangement. We hear all of that. It is absolutely imperative that by June, the British have shown us the colour of their money. If they do not like the backstop as proposed and written out in legal text by the European authorities, they need to come up with their own one. We need to know it meets the requisite standard. There is a real danger, if this drifts any further, that we could become the victims and collateral damage of the pressure politics that will undoubtedly unfold as Europe as a whole and individual member states move to protect what they regard as their individual interests. My colleague, Deputy Cullinane, will elaborate on some of these ideas.

I raise again the issue of Catalonia. I condemn the arrest of Carles Puigdemont and his colleagues. It is absolutely reprehensible and counter-productive. The actions of the Spanish Government have served only to deepen the crisis. The dispute between the peoples of Catalonia and the Spanish state over independence will not be resolved by incarceration or repression. The people voted for independence and the European Union at this stage has a duty to come off the sidelines.

It is not good enough for an Irish Government to hide behind the lie that this is an internal matter for the Spanish Government. This is a matter of democracy. It is a matter of national self-determination, and we in this country should know all about that. I am asking the Taoiseach to show leadership in calling on the Spanish Government to release democratically elected representatives, commit to dialogue and mediation, and to respect the vote of the people of Catalonia. I ask the Taoiseach to pick up the telephone to Mr. Rajoy and other EU leaders, and to convey a message in the strongest possible terms that in disputes such as these - we know this to our cost, and the women from north Belfast in the Gallery could tell the Taoiseach this - that repression and incarceration do not work; dialogue does. That is the great lesson from Ireland and the Taoiseach should be an ambassador for it.

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