Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Brexit is without doubt the biggest disrupter and challenge to Ireland, North and South, since the building, construction and banking collapse of 2008. So much has been spoken and written about it that many people are weary of this convoluted and complex discussion. The document presented by Mr. Barnier and his team represents one of the better possibilities for Ireland, or the least worst. Few people on this island, North and South, wanted a referendum. The possibility of a hard border is an enormous threat to livelihoods North and South and so the backstop is essential.

The UK and Ireland have now been in the European Union for more than 45 years. In the context of the First World War Armistice remembrances, it is important to remember that we have now been in the EU longer than the period of the First World War, the interwar years and the period up to the end and after the end of the Second World War combined.

Our membership has helped to transform this country, particularly, speaking as a woman Deputy, the approach of the European Union collectively to equality towards women and in the workplace and human rights, civil rights and workers' rights. This has enabled a huge amount of progress in this country that otherwise could have taken three times longer to achieve. The best hope for our Ireland and particularly for the European Union is that we have a renewed vision of a social EU, which is strongly what it was until about 20 years ago, that the EU represents and joins the fight to end poverty, homelessness and lack of social provision and that in Ireland we continue to develop our model of social provision and care in line with the best performers in the European Union.

We need as a country and as a society to do much more to reach out to all the citizens of Northern Ireland. To give an example of how unsettling this debate has been at times, Boris Johnson, in a comment which I think raised many eyebrows, recently remarked that the Border between the two parts of Ireland is no different to the border between Camden and Islington. If the House can imagine it, Dundalk and Newry and the borderlands in between are basically his Camden and Islington. "How posh," one might say, but also how removed this comment is from any real notion of what life and indeed geography are like in this country. In the context of very difficult debates, disruptions and changes still to come, we need to take the Good Friday Agreement as offering in many ways the best roadmap for possibilities in a post-Brexit settlement. It should be recalled that the agreement recognises that it is for the people of Ireland alone to exercise the right to self-determination, but on the basis of consent North and South to progress it. It is critical that everyone in this Chamber acknowledge and recognise this. We really do not need rhetoric about easy achievements that we all know mean changes of hearts and minds and not simply a determination that it is our way, right or wrong.

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