Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Most of us are becoming very fearful of the direction of travel in the negotiations, despite what was said last December. The Taoiseach warned the withdrawal agreement would be in question if progress was not made by the June Council. Specifically, he stated that "if we are not making real and substantial progress by June then we need to seriously question whether we are going to have a withdrawal agreement at all".

The UK Government is unable to agree a route to implement the backstop it had agreed. Westminster, as the Taoiseach knows, today and tomorrow is going through critical votes. A junior Minister, Phillip Lee, has resigned from government because of government policy on not allowing Westminster a conclusive final vote on the matter. The Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Coveney, previously said serious questions would have to be asked if progress on the backstop was not made by June. This seems to have changed because he is now saying the June Council meeting should not be built up to something it is not. However, he was the one who built it up. The Taoiseach himself has changed his tune. He said last Saturday, "The deadline is October and I do think it is possible between now and October for us to finalise and negotiate." This seems to be the current position. Real and substantial progress on a document to implement what we understood to have been agreed and to be bullet-proof last December was to be achieved before the final negotiating Council, which is in June. Now, as I had feared and as I have said in a number of contributions here and elsewhere, that seems to be slipping to the October deadline. The October Council meeting was always going to be simply to ratify finally. It is not a negotiating Council in and of itself and there would be very little scope for the European Parliament or indeed national parliaments to debate and understand the details if we are going to slip into the October deadline, so we need now to now make a very clear statement of the Irish position on these matters.

The Taoiseach's predecessor, Deputy Enda Kenny, said yesterday, at a function the Taoiseach and I both attended, that little progress has been made since September and he was very honest in saying so. He said that in order now to address the outstanding issues, it might be necessary for a special Council meeting to be convened before October. Does the Taoiseach think this strategy might be needed?

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