Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are approaching the most crucial, critical time in the State's history in terms of how the people of Ireland will survive or manage if Brexit becomes a reality. I was the first person in this Chamber after the result of the referendum became known to ask the then Taoiseach and Tánaiste to plead with the UK to have another referendum. I am still asking for that and many people around the country hope that at the last minute, they will hold another referendum and that the result would be to remain.

For farmers, particularly in disadvantaged areas, Brexit becoming a reality will have a detrimental effect on so many. Some say that many will be wiped out and that farming as we know it in disadvantaged rural areas will be lost forever. Worry over Brexit has meant that the price of cattle has already fallen. The price of cattle is very bad.

Business people are worried about changes in the value of sterling. People with small industries who export to the North of Ireland and the United Kingdom are already losing money because of the cost of sterling.

We are worried that the cross-border directive, which we use frequently to bring patients to the North to get cataracts removed from their eyes and thereby prevent them from losing their sight, will cease or will not work for us anymore when Brexit becomes a reality. Many people would have gone blind by this stage if we had not been able to take them to the North on buses over the last 12 or 18 months. The ability to avail of this directive has saved the eyesight of hundreds of people. Many people are going to the North for hip operations and various other procedures. They could not afford to do that, or attempt it at all, if they were not getting their money back under the cross-border directive.

I wonder how the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste got it so wrong before Christmas last year when they said there was going to be no hard Brexit. It is so serious. Mrs. May does not appear to know what she is doing. She is saying one thing one day and saying another thing another day. We will lose many markets to England if Brexit becomes a reality. We are all hoping for another referendum and a different result.

See this speech in context