Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said earlier, it is not advisable for me at this stage in the negotiations to give a running commentary on how things are going but briefings are available to party leaders and, of course, they are available through the co-ordination group headed by the Tánaiste. I welcome the fact some parties have been attending the group regularly. Suffice to say, a lot of briefings have been going on and there have been a lot of stories in the media which have been very far off the mark.

In terms of the Government's position in this phase of the talks, our position is as it has been since the very start. We want the withdrawal agreement to include a commitment to retaining the common travel area, a transition period giving businesses and people time to prepare for any permanent changes that may take place in the rules of east-west trade between Britain and Ireland and protection of citizens' rights for those EU citizens living in Northern Ireland. There is also the backstop - the Irish protocol - which gives us a legally operable guarantee that should it not be possible to negotiate a new comprehensive relationship between the UK and the EU that negates the need for a border during the transition period, we will have the backstop to fall back on. This is something we hope will never need to be used. We would prefer to resolve the situation through the new EU-UK relationship, and I have always said that. We want option A as opposed to option C, if we want to go back to the language of December. However, we still need it because when I hear people talking about negotiating a new deal between the EU and the UK, something similar to Canada, for example, first, that would not solve the border problem and, second, it took seven years to negotiate. We need to know there is a legally operable backstop in place which would apply unless and until we can develop a new-----

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