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

The Prime Minister, Mrs. May, did not attend the BIC and I understand she has never done so. While former Prime Minister Cameron attended one such meeting during his six year tenure, the practice since the early days of the Good Friday Agreement has been that the Taoiseach attends on behalf of Ireland and the Secretary of State attends on behalf of the UK Government. I have not spoken to Prime Minister May about her attending the council but I have spoken to her about the need for a new mechanism by which the British and Irish Governments can engage on a structured basis. We do this well at the moment because both countries are in the EU and every Minister and his or her UK counterpart attends EU Councils three or four times a year, which is always a good opportunity for bilaterals. We will now move from a situation whereby we see each other at least four times a year in Brussels to a situation whereby we will not. This will happen from March next year and I have spoken to Prime Minister May about how we might deal with that and put in place a structured mechanism by which the two sovereign governments could meet more regularly. Perhaps, the mechanism for doing this is not the BIC, but the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference, BIIGC, which can meet in different formats. The Good Friday Agreement may have been more foreseeing than any of us could have imagined in that, perhaps, this mechanism for east-west co-operation between the two sovereign Governments could be reinvigorated and used an opportunity for us engage Minister to Minister and Prime Minister to Prime Minister on a structured basis after the UK leaves the European Union in March.

On the backstop, or the protocol in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Prime Minister May once again restated her commitment to having a legally operable backstop as part of the withdrawal agreement. In Salzburg, the other 26 member states reiterated their solidarity with Ireland and restated our position that there will not be a withdrawal agreement and no transition period for the UK if there is not an Irish protocol - a legally operable Irish backstop - as part of that agreement. I believe we will get there - and in November - because nobody wants us to end up in a no deal scenario. The damage for the UK would be immense. The damage for Ireland would also be immense and it would have a serious impact on other countries like Belgium, Holland, France and Denmark. As I said, I believe we will get there in November but we are in uncharted territory.

I have sought a lot of advice on this over the past couple of weeks and over the summer. I have met many wise old heads who know Europe, British politics and Northern Ireland and all the issues around it and I came away from those meetings with the advice that it is uncharted territory and unpredictable and I was advised to do my best. That was probably the best advice I could have got. We will have to stay engaged and stay vigilant and that is what we will do in the period ahead.

In terms of talks on getting the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly back up and running, the Tánaiste and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland are in touch about new talks. There have been suggestions around the possibility of having an independent chair for these talks but I understand that proposal has not found favour with the DUP and it will not be possible to form an Executive in Northern Ireland unless the DUP and Sinn Féin can come together and come to an agreement. Northern Ireland unfortunately now holds the international record for failing to form a government, which is a real shame. Clarity around Brexit could help so perhaps by the October or November summit, if there is one, we will have a road map as to how Brexit will work and what the new relationships will look like. We might then be in a better position to bring the parties together again and Government stands ready to do exactly that.

I did not have a chance to hear Sir Keir Starmer's speech so I cannot really comment on it but it is the case that any withdrawal agreement will have to be ratified by both Westminster and the European Parliament so while we may assume that because something is agreed by the European Council and the UK that it will go through both parliaments, we should not actually make that assumption. There is the possibility that the Heads of Government in the European Council and the UK will come to a decision in October or November and we may find that it runs into ratification problems in Westminster or the European Parliament. We will have to manage that and see how it develops.

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's question, we are recruiting customs and revenue officers for the ports and airports, particularly Dublin Airport, Dublin Port and Rosslare Europort. It must be borne in mind that when the UK leaves the European Union, whether it is in March next year or at the end of the transition period at the start of 2021, it will be leaving the Single Market as well so there will be changes. The rules of trade and the trading relationship between Britain and Ireland will not be as it is now. We need to make provision for those changes and that is what we are doing but we will not be deploying any of them along the land Border with Northern Ireland.

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