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

The turnover rate is 15% in Australia so people are three times more likely to leave the Australian health service than the Irish public health service. Those figures come from the Public Sector Pay Commission and are independent and can be accredited.

As I understand it, a codicil is a legal amendment after the fact to a treaty or agreement. We have seen no proposals from London or anywhere in respect of a codicil. I am conscious votes will happen in the House of Commons later. I was in touch by phone with Prime Minister May earlier and we intend to speak again after those votes happen. We will take it from there in terms of the next steps.

I can confirm that there are no works happening on or around the Border to facilitate the imposition of physical infrastructure. Any works that are happening are road repairs, I imagine, or improvements to roads.

To maintain the common travel area and all the benefits that flow from it, which are about much more than travel, we will need a memorandum of understanding, MOU, with the United Kingdom, which we have been working on for some time, a convention on social security which the Minister, Deputy O'Doherty, and Secretary of State, Ms Amber Rudd, have worked on, and legislation in both countries. We have shown the House the heads of legislation which covers our side of that and that will be published on 22 February. The UK will have to do something similar.

See this speech in context