David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Bill seeks to amend the European Communities Act 1972 and requires the Government to update the Oireachtas formally on Brexit developments and negotiations and on preserving the rights of Irish citizens in the North. As Teachta Adams said, we acknowledge the Government has in recent times agreed and followed through on its commitment to update the House on a regular basis. The difficulty is the updates are at the whim of the Government. They are not on a formal or statutory basis. There is no agreed formalised arrangement. To put the updates and all the associated reports that the Government gives the Dáil on a statutory formalised basis would be a good move and something the Government should support.

We must consider it in light of the potential period of transition we are facing into, notwithstanding what might come from the current phase of negotiations in terms of the trade talks between the European Union and Britain. We are, without doubt, facing into at least a two-year transition period. Given that, the importance of Brexit and the impact it will have on Ireland, notwithstanding whatever agreements are eventually put in place, it is timely that measures such as those proposed in the Bill are agreed and accepted. That is why I support the call by Teachta Adams that the Government does not just ignore the Bill, vote it down or oppose it but accepts it to go into Committee Stage where we can tease out the proposals that are being made.

We are two years on from the European Union referendum and it is a year to go to Brexit. When the Taoiseach informed the public he had a discussion with the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, on the current negotiations and that she talked about new thinking, it was being talked up as a major development. We were brought back to last December when the Taoiseach came back and talked up the political agreement saying it was a cast iron, bullet-proof agreement. This was the back-stop arrangement. We were told it was a certainty and it would be the bare minimum that would be put in place. It was very quickly followed by contradictions, backsliding and disagreements between the British Government, the European Union and the Irish Government on the interpretation of the agreement. A legal text was put on the table and dismissed out of hand by a British Prime Minister. After months of that cast-iron guarantee being put on the table we are still without any clear proposals. Now we have a new proposal and new ideas which we still have not seen and of which we do not know the detail. Are we now facing more months of uncertainty and more months of negotiations? Is it the case the British Government is stringing everybody along, including the European Union and the Irish Government, with all of these promises because it is obviously trying to keep every side of the Tory party happy which is an impossible task given the very opposite positions that are held?

I accept the proposition the Minister put forward, which Teachta Adams referred to, that the backstop arrangement may not have to be put in place if we can get a better outcome. If that better outcome is essentially Britain staying in the customs union and the Single Market then that resolves an awful lot of these issues for the State. There are still polar opposite positions being taken by the two wings of the Tory Cabinet with the British Prime Minister saying Britain and the North will come out of the customs union and Single Market. It is still the stated position of the British Government that the North will come out of the legal and political architecture of the European Union and it will put some protections in place. If that happens there will be a step backwards in terms of the Border, the Good Friday Agreement and the rights of citizens in the North, including their political, human and civil rights. We talked about this last week as well when we had updates on the European Council meeting. The issue of the rights of people who live in the North was also raised during priority questions. The Minister said in December there was a commitment in principle from all involved that these rights, which Irish citizens who are also European citizens who live in the North have, should be protected and respected but there is no agreement on the detail because it is unprecedented to have hundreds of thousands of people who are European citizens not living in European Union territory. Saying we have agreement in principle and we are still negotiating and trying to make progress is not really any comfort to the people in the North who are worried about educational opportunities outside of the North in the South and the European Union and things such as access to European Union insurance funds if they go abroad on holidays and all the other human and civil rights that are protected by the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. It is still the position of the British Government that the North will not be under the purview of those courts which is in contravention of the Good Friday Agreement. There is agreement on none of these issues. I hope these new ideas and the new thinking the Taoiseach was talking about today resolves all of these issues. I am sure the Minister will appreciate that we want to see the detail. What we do not want is more fudge and more talk of new ideas while we are still none the wiser about what exactly will happen. Workers' rights need to be protected. It is an area we see as a threat. I sit on the Brexit stakeholder forum. I welcome it as another structure that was put in place by the Government. I have found it very useful because of all the groups that sit on it. Fishing is a big issue and a big concern. Fishermen have real concerns about how Brexit will impact on them. They do not have any certainties.

I will finish on where we in Sinn Féin started. I welcome that eventually the Irish Government moved closer to the Sinn Féin position from where it was under Deputy Enda Kenny and where it started which was a very different place. We said there had to be a form of special status for the North and special arrangements and that we had to look at new opportunities and new ways in which we could protect the Good Friday Agreement and make sure there is no hardening of the Border which is entirely different from having no hard border. The acid test for any Irish Government in terms of these negotiations and for the European Union and the British Government is that the people of the North voted to stay in the European Union. With regard to all the issues I mentioned, including workers' rights, access to healthcare, access to education, human rights, civil rights, political rights, the Border and the Good Friday Agreement, there can be no rowing back on any of the rights and entitlements for people who live in the North as a result of a vote of people in England or Wales. It simply cannot happen. We cannot have these hard Brexiteers dictate to the people of Ireland and end up putting in place political solutions that in reality will be a row back on any of those rights and entitlements. That will not be accepted. It will not be tolerated.

We will continue to wish the Government well but we are running out of patience as a result of not getting the detail. I hope that by June and the June summit, the clarity the Minister talked about, which we need, will actually come and we will see the colour of everybody's money including the Irish Government and the British Government.

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