David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are approaching the end game. In order to judge this Government on what it has achieved we have to go back to almost the start of the process. At the start of the process, this Government and the European Union promised that the Irish issues would be resolved before moving on from phase one of the negotiations. There were a number of elements in that phase, including the divorce agreement and issues around trade, but the Irish issue was crucial.

There was a fudge, of course. We moved on from phase one into phase two and the Irish issues have been fudged ever since. We had a political agreement last December that was hailed as a cast-iron guarantee by the Taoiseach and oversold by the Government at the time. We cautioned it not to do so. We were then told we would have a legal text by March. March came and went and there was no legal text. We had a legal text from the European Union. The EU put its position on the table; it was rejected out of hand by the British Government. June was to be the new deadline. June came and went and still no agreement emerged. We were told that October would be the new deadline. Now it seems October will come and go, and we still will not have agreement.

I am a bit perplexed by the Fianna Fáil position. That party seems to want to wrap Prime Minister Theresa May up in cotton wool. It says that if only we were nicer to Theresa May we might have got a better outcome. That is a very naive position. The reality is that this Tory Government forced Brexit on the Irish people. It is the same Tory Government that is ignoring the will of the people in the North who voted to stay in the European Union. It is the same Tory Government that has created chaos around Brexit. It has no plan and no strategy. It did not care one jot about the Irish people before the referendum, during the referendum or, as we have seen, after the referendum. That has been the sad reality of the British Tory Party. It is divided, but it is divided as to its own interests. A war within the Tory Party is being played out and it is having devastating consequences for the Irish people. I am not in any mood to give any protections to a British Prime Minister who has failed in her obligations and her responsibility to come up with the proposals that she needs to come up with.

There are so many contradictions in this that it is hard to make sense of it and understand what is happening. A British Prime Minister has promised there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland to protect the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts and to protect citizens' rights. She also says that she does not want a border in the Irish Sea or to divide her country. She is talking about the United Kingdom; I will not go into the irony there. However, in the same breath she says that she will take the North out of the customs union and Single Market. That is going to happen. How can we avoid a border on the island of Ireland and a border in the Irish Sea if Britain and the North leave the customs union and the Single Market? It simply cannot happen and everybody knows it. We have had this fantasy politics, this absolute nonsense from the Tory Party for far too long. At some point the British Government is going to have to put its solutions on the table. It is going to have to explain to people how it will square that circle, having told the Irish people it can avoid a hardening of the Border, protect the Good Friday Agreement and avoid a border in the sea.

What we know is that we had an agreement last December. As a political agreement, it certainly ticked a lot of boxes, with the North staying in the customs union and elements of the Single Market. It was not ideal. It was imperfect and needed to be built on, shaped, nurtured and negotiated in detail to give us a product we could see as a solution for Ireland. It was also meant to be a permanent solution in the event that something better did not come along. That was what the backstop was meant to be.

There are two sets of negotiations. There is the negotiation on the withdrawal agreement, which has to be in place by March. The backstop has to be attached to that. Further to that there is the separate future trading relationship, which will work itself out as part of the implementation period which will be in place for a year. However, the backstop was meant to mean that whatever happened in the future trading relationship talks, at the very least Ireland would have this guarantee. Not for a week, a month or a year; it was to be a permanent solution.

However, this is an evolving situation. The British Government now wants to make that a temporary solution. It obviously wants to keep the DUP on board. It wants whatever is in play for the North to apply to Britain as a whole, but it obviously does not want to be in the position of saying that the North and Britain will stay in the customs union and the Single Market. These games are being played out. There are all sorts of nuances and considerations. I accept that the British Prime Minister has a difficult job in managing her party and bringing some of the hard Brexiteers with her. That is fine, but she has had an awfully long time to do it. We are now coming to the crunch and when we come to the crunch we will need to see product and solutions, but we still have not seen them.

I was always on the optimistic side of this issue. I always believed that we would get a deal. I am still on the optimistic side because we need one. If there is no withdrawal agreement then there is no protocol for Ireland. There is no backstop. If there is no withdrawal agreement the United Kingdom, including the North, will crash out of the European Union. That means a hard border. It means real challenges to the Good Friday Agreement. A no-deal scenario is an absolute disaster for the people of Ireland. I would argue that it is also an absolute disaster for the people of Britain and the European Union. For that reason, logic would say that there has to be a deal. However, we have seen logic thrown out the window so many times on Brexit that it is hard to know. I still believe that there will be some arrangement.

Our fear is that at the eleventh hour something will be put on the table that will be less than what we were promised in December. It might be a time-limited backstop, or one that does not have the provisions we want to protect against a hard border or protect the Good Friday Agreement. The Irish Government will be bounced because the neither British Government nor the European Union will move, and we will end up in a difficult situation. That is what we are trying to avoid. That is why all of this was to be tied up last March, and then in June, and now in October. It is a real worry that all of these dates are coming and going.

We never sought, as some Ministers have said, to make this an orange or green issue. Our position is very clear. The voters in the North must be respected. They voted to stay in the European Union. We are seeking special status for the North so that it can stay in the European Union. We want a deal. We are not planning for a no-deal scenario. Obviously, if it happens, we must have contingency plans but we are not hoping for it. We do not want it. We want a deal. We want a solution because the lack of one will have such a devastating impact on the people that we represent on either side of the Border.

If the British Government continues with its strategy of not considering Ireland and not putting solutions in place and if we get to a point in March where there the UK crashes out of the European Union, then from the point of view of everyone who believes in Irish unity or believes that the island of Ireland should stay as a unit in the European Union, it is reasonable to think there should be a Border poll. I do not think that is an unfair proposition. It would be a very fair one. All the opinion polls are showing that in the event of a no-deal scenario, a hard Brexit and a crash more people in the North, including some unionists, will support a united Ireland. I wish to put that on the table.

We have taken some flak for supporting the Government on this, but we never saw it as supporting the Government. We see it as supporting an Irish position. We see it as supporting an Irish outcome and getting the best deal for the people that we all collectively represent, the people of Ireland, North and South. That is our absolute priority. However, the Minister must understand our perspective. There are shifting deadlines, divisions in the Tory Party and contradictory statements coming from Theresa May. Only last week after the Salzburg statement she reiterated that there will be no solution that creates a border in the Irish Sea, as if that is what the people of Ireland are looking for. It is as if we are all jumping up and down, demanding a border in the Irish sea. The only people who will put a border in the Irish Sea are in the British Government. It is not an objective of the Irish Government, the European Union or Sinn Féin. The way to avoid a border in the Irish Sea is for Britain as a whole, not just the North, to stay in the customs union and elements of the Single Market, or for some sort of free trade agreement to be worked out. Such an agreement is being called a "customs arrangement". There are solutions and there are possibilities. The problem is that we are arriving at the eleventh hour and we have not seen them. That is not a good position for us to be in at this point in time.

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