David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Our job in the Opposition is in the first instance to hold the Taoiseach and his Government to account. The very least we expect is that he and his Government deliver on their own commitments and the benchmarks they set. Last December, the Taoiseach was very clear and unequivocal in his comments on the backstop, which he knows and I know was meant to be a permanent solution for Ireland to align the North with the rules of the Single Market and customs union in the event of no deal between Britain and the European Union. What happened a number of days ago, when the British Government published its paper, was that it reconstructed that backstop to nothing more than a UK-wide extension of the implementation period. There is now no certainty for Ireland as to what will happen if the talks break down, which is obviously very serious. I do not necessarily blame the Taoiseach for this. While obviously we must hold him to account, and his Government did say we would only be able to move past June if we had real and substantial progress, we also have a responsibility as Oireachtas Members and as politicians in Ireland to ensure we support positions that get the best deal for Ireland. This is genuinely what we have done in approaching all these Brexit negotiations. We need to ensure there is no fracture in the Irish position. We will be as supportive as we can but we also need to see real progress. The people were entitled to see real progress in June and, unfortunately, they have not seen it. The reality is - it has been said over and over - that the Government has possibly oversold the December agreement and the British Government, as divided as it is, has pulled a rug from under the European negotiators and the Irish Government by essentially taking the backstop off the table and replacing it with an extension of the implementation period, which does nothing for the people of Ireland.

My final point is this: regarding the high-level principles on which everyone - the British Government, the European negotiators and the Irish Government - agrees, namely, protection of the Good Friday Agreement, no hardening of the Border, and citizens' rights, in huge swathes of these areas we still have no agreement and it is our responsibility to hold the Taoiseach to account as to why this is the case.

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