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

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. It is a pretty serious question but I will try to answer it within one minute. I thank Opposition parties in particular in the House for their support on the broader efforts on Brexit. We will be asking them for more co-operation next week on the legislation being published tomorrow. I met Michel Barnier on Monday and received reports from the Juncker-May meeting yesterday. Our position has been consistent for many months and will not change. The backstop is a necessary guarantee to reassure people on this island that they will not face the re-emergence of border infrastructure between the two jurisdictions on this island as an unintended consequence of Brexit at any point in future. That is also the EU's position, which is why it has said that it is not willing to reopen or renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. The agreement is already a finely-balanced document involving compromises on both sides to achieve important outcomes, in particular from an Irish perspective. The focus now is on how to give the House of Commons the reassurance it needs around the temporary nature of the backstop which will hopefully never be used but which needs to be in place unless and until it can be replaced by something more permanent which must do the same job the backstop has been designed to do. That is where this issue of alternative arrangements comes in. Alternative arrangements are already catered for in the existing withdrawal agreement and in the future relationship declaration. If there are alternative arrangements that can replace the backstop, as long as they do the same job, they can, of course, be considered. However, we cannot have time limits or unilateral exit clauses on the backstop without knowing what will come after that. If we had, it would not be a backstop at all.

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