Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In recent weeks, we have seen further proof that many of the British politicians who argue most passionately and vociferously for Brexit, indeed for a hard Brexit, have no idea at all about what that will mean for the people of Northern Ireland or for the Good Friday Agreement. In the week when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement referendum, it is worth noting that the most recent survey shows that people in the North now more passionately oppose Brexit than they did even at the 2016 referendum. This week the British Minister of State for Immigration told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that she has not even read the Good Friday Agreement. She was there specifically to discuss Brexit and talk about what her Department was doing on Brexit in the context of Northern Ireland. This is astounding stuff but it is only one small example.

The former Northern Ireland Secretary, Owen Paterson, a Conservative MP, and the Sammy Wilson, MP, of the DUP published a jointly written article in last Monday's Daily Telegraphin which they argue that re-establishing the Border will not be an issue. Without any recourse to facts or reality they accuse political leaders on this island and anti Brexiteers in Britain of exploiting fantasies about the Irish Border. They base this on their extraordinary discovery that "There is a border: it hasn't gone away." Yes, of course there is a Border. It is there because there are two jurisdictions on this island. There are separate legal, criminal justice and healthcare systems. There are separate political and governmental administrations. Did this news seriously come as a shock to a DUP MP and a former Northern Ireland Secretary? Yes, there is a Border but it is as soft a border as possible. There are no checkpoints, there is no border infrastructure and there are no military installations. It is no longer a border that is patrolled on both sides with a heavy customs, police and armed military presence.

While Mr. Wilson and Mr. Paterson may not understand the difference between the two situations, I can assure them that I and my constituents do. We know it based on experience. We know what was there before and we know that we do not wish to travel one single step back towards that horrible and tragic past. We know that the Chief Constable of the PSNI has warned of his fears and concerns at the prospect of any return to a harder border. We know that the Good Friday Agreement was concerned with breaking down borders and that it did that by creating the political conditions that allowed both the removal of the border infrastructure on the ground and diminishing the border attitudes in people's minds. The communities on both sides of the Border, where I live, no longer live with their backs to each other, as my colleague, Deputy Breathnach has often said.

People now live their lives together across the Border and not in separate silos on either side of it. That progress took time. It took decades of hard work and trust-building. In their excellent presentation to the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, Professor David Phinnemore and Dr. Katy Hayward of Queen's University Belfast pointed out that much of the history of the European Union entails devising innovative solutions to cross-border problems.

Brexit attempts to undo this progress and set the clock back on this island. Both Professor Phinnemore and Dr. Hayward said that the success of the Good Friday Agreement has centred on viewing the Irish Border, and Northern Ireland more broadly, as a point of contact between Britain and Ireland and not a dividing line between them. Therein lies the path to finding a way through the Brexit dilemma Britain has foisted upon us. I refer to the British Government and the political establishment at Westminster, That establishment includes the British Labour Party, which has become a passive enabler of Brexit, although I welcome Mr. Corbyn's long overdue visit to Northern Ireland today. We need to impress upon them that the Irish Border and Northern Ireland could and should become the positive point of contact - the interface - not just between Britain and Ireland but between Britain and the European Union. If the happens, then perhaps the people that I represent can have some hope of safeguarding and ensuring the hard won progress of the last two decades.

I will address the remarks of Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan on the horrible atrocities in Dublin and Monaghan on 17 May 1974. It is appalling that the British Government has failed to respond to the three unanimous requests from this House in 2008, 2011 and 2016. We asked the British Government to give an eminent international legal person access to all papers and files pertaining to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. While visiting Westminster last week, I had the opportunity to raise this matter with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Ms Karen Bradley. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, Deputy Crowe, a few others and I have been constant advocates on this issue, along with other constituency colleagues. We ask the Minister of State to impress upon the Government the need to ensure that this particular issue is kept to the forefront of the agenda in all discussions between the two Governments. The British Government's total dismissal of the unanimous views of our Parliament on the awful atrocity in 1974 is appalling and reprehensible.

See this speech in context