Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ireland is clear on how it sees mechanisms working to prevent hard border infrastructure. They revolve around regulatory alignment in areas that are specific and are required to prevent the need for Border infrastructure. That is how the backstop works. It is essentially the fall-back position to which the British Government repeatedly committed, if it could not find other solutions through a future relationship discussion or through bespoke solutions offered to Ireland. The fall-back position would be regulatory alignment in the areas necessary to prevent Border infrastructure and to protect an all-island economy which is also very much part of protecting the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. Borders are not mentioned in the Good Friday Agreement but the absence of physical Border infrastructure has been such a strong reinforcement to the creation of normality, commerce and peace, that it is self-evident.

The Government's view is that, deal or no deal, there is an obligation on the British and Irish Governments to work together, and on the EU to support that process, and to find a way of avoiding Border infrastructure through regulatory alignment.

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