Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am both disappointed and concerned that we did not have any progress on the Irish issues and the Border in last month's Council meeting even though we had known for some time that that would be the case. It is even more disappointing to see the measly four paragraph conclusion paper published by the Council regarding Brexit. It illustrates that Brexit most definitely was not top of the agenda and that we are not the only show in town, although one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise given the spinning the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste embarked upon, citing the June Council meeting as a key deadline in these negotiations that they had set for significant progress and one that has now been missed.

It appears all that happened in regard to Brexit at the June meeting was to welcome a small amount of progress on other elements of the withdrawal treaty and to give Prime Minister Theresa May a stern talking to, which I am sure she is getting quite used to at this stage. Essentially, the EU warned Theresa May to get a move on and honour the commitments she and her Government gave last December and March. We await to see the progress on that.

Reports coming from the United Kingdom suggest she will propose a third option, distinct and separate from maximum facilitation, or max fac, and the customs partnership about which we have heard, and that she will seek approval for that. We await the much hoped for white smoke from the incoming White Paper this weekend.

What we do know is that we do not have an agreed backstop. There has been zero progress on the Irish issues since last December. We are expected to have a withdrawal treaty in place by October and ratified by next March and the UK still has not decided what it wants. Ireland is in a very precarious and vulnerable position with time fast running out. It is becoming a real possibility that the UK may crash out of the EU next March with a no-deal Brexit scenario.

The focus of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to date has been to overspin short-term developments as big political wins and, in the process of doing so, they have failed to give a true and accurate picture of the genuine state of play of Brexit negotiations to our citizens. We saw that with the backstop last December, which did no one any favours. That allowed complacency to set in in government and across the business and farming community because our Government essentially told us that everything would be okay.

We do not know the Government plan in terms of a scenario of a no-deal Brexit. Despite the numerous information briefings the Tánaiste has provided, and many glossy policy papers, having sat in those briefings I am none the wiser as to the Government's plan for a no-deal Brexit. I can get the information we get from The Irish Timesor The Guardian. It is not anything additional to what is in the media.

We do not even seem to be prepared for a soft Brexit, never mind a hard Brexit. The Taoiseach seems far more interested in touring the European capitals on the mainland rather than trying to build relationships with the UK in what is already a very strained situation.

Can we really just sit back and wait for Theresa May to put a solution on the table? The Minister of State will know the saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. It is utter madness at this stage just to sit back and wait for the Tory party, some of whose members have been openly hostile to Ireland and want to call our bluff, to use their words, to provide a solution to the Irish Border issue. Is it not time now to start putting some of our own proposals on the table when we are essentially in the 11th hour of these negotiations?

It must be remembered that for most member states, Brexit is merely an inconvenience. It does not affect every member state in the same way it affects Ireland, and other member states have other issues to worry about. The European Union is under attack from so many avenues. I refer to the change to a populist government in Italy, the anti-migrant rhetoric of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, a member of a party associated with Fine Gael's own party in Europe, the European People's Party, German Chancellor Angela Merkel coming under huge pressure in terms of the migrant crisis, and severe levels of poverty and unemployment across many of the southern member states. All of those threaten the European project and it would be wise for us to remember that here in Ireland. I read recently that 5 million Italian citizens are living below the poverty line. That provides a stark contrast to the projected problems for our county in the event of a hard Brexit and reminds us that we are not the only issue the European Union is dealing with. Guy Verhofstadt gave a sobering warning in this Chamber last month when he said something we in Fianna Fáil have been saying from the very beginning and I have been saying since taking up my post. Although a hard Brexit is unlikely, we must prepare. It was only after that remark in this Chamber that the penny finally dropped for Government. Scenario planning then began to deal with all the possible outcomes, including a hard Brexit. That planning should have started 18 months ago.

It is now time to step up preparations considerably to do whatever we can to encourage businesses to take up the available supports, something they have not done in the numbers we expected them to have done at this point. We must diversify our agrifood markets and start working on improving relationships with the UK. These are all actions the Irish Government can and must take now.

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