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

I do not accept the Deputy's charge. The stakeholder group meets regularly and information is given to stakeholders. Any time Opposition spokespersons have asked for a briefing, they have been provided with one. We could not publish the contingency plan until the day we did so because we had to have the European Commission one first, and I explained that at the time.

The work on social security is completed so a draft international agreement between the UK and Ireland has been prepared by officials in the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty's office and in Secretary of State Rudd's office and that will allow existing arrangements to continue. There are between 20,000 and 30,000 people in Ireland who get some of their pension from the UK social security provision. Before that treaty can be signed, we need to ratify the withdrawal agreement because the common travel area and everything associated with it is underlined in the withdrawal agreement. We could do it separately, bilaterally, but that is not the space we want to be in, ideally, when we have been negotiating multilaterally for so long.

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