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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 47 and 56 together.

The legislation itself is a big challenge, logistically, for this Parliament. There are nine Departments involved in contributing to the legislation, including the Department of the Taoiseach. Essentially, there will be 17 pieces of legislation in one omnibus Bill. We hope to publish the Bill on 22 February. The legal draftspeople are working overtime to try to get it done. We have given them the heads of the Bills from each of the nine Departments. What this is about is legislating for a worst case scenario where the UK leaves the EU without a deal, without proper contingency planning and without a transition period, which is what everybody wants to create the time and space to be able to put permanent solutions in place. In that scenario we must protect our own citizens in a practical way.

We must make sure that trains can continue to travel between Dublin and Belfast under a new environment because they will be travelling out of the EU into a third country and back in again. We must ensure that British students can continue to come to Irish universities in the way that they do today and that Irish students can continue to go to British universities and get the kind of financial supports that they get today. We must continue to ensure that children in Belfast who are being brought to Dublin for specialist paediatric care can continue to do that in a way that is catered for in law, and that in the same way the many patients from Donegal who go across the Border into Altnagelvin hospital will get the same kind of treatments. We must ensure that people in Ireland who get pensions that are paid for by the British Government, and people who get pensions in the UK that are paid for by the Government continue to be able to hold onto their incomes in a way that is seamless after 29 March. There are lots of practical areas to be addressed.

Secondary legislation is also required to deal with issues such as the recognition of a British driver's licence in Ireland. Those are all things we take for granted when we share a Union together, when we share a Single Market, and when we all operate to the same rules base and the same series of directives.

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