Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Our thoughts are with the family of Councillor Manus Kelly as he is buried today. It is a tragic loss.

Tomorrow our thoughts should also be with the friends and family of Ivan Cooper, and on how we need men like Ivan Cooper today. Coming from a working-class Protestant tradition, he ended up managing a shirt factory. Championing the cause of the Catholic workers in his factory, he led the parades in 1968 and the famous Bloody Sunday parade in 1972, the source of so much of our Troubles. We are in trouble again.

After the murder of Lyra McKee almost two and a half months ago, Fr. Martin McGill asked why it had taken the death of a 29 year old woman for the parties of the North to come together again and commit to doing what they could to see a restoration of the Executive and the assembly in the North. It was hoped that this would be concluded by the end of June. I cannot see any sign of that eventuality whatsoever. I presume that such hopes will be put aside with the marching season. The difficulty is that when we return in September, we are likely to be in a most complex and fraught negotiating position with the UK Government over what is happening with Brexit. It is highly unlikely that restoration could be carried out in such circumstances. Then we will hit October. As the Taoiseach said yesterday in the national economic dialogue, a no-deal Brexit is now highly likely.

In advance of the first deadline in March, Mr. David Penman, the general secretary of the trade union representing public servants in the North, said that civil servants could not take the kind of decisions that would need to be taken in such a scenario. The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, said in the House of Commons that some direct application of powers would have to be put in place in those circumstances. We would be back to direct rule. The Good Friday Agreement would be in tatters and the environment which created the conditions for it would be gone. We would face a no-deal scenario with many differences between the jurisdictions in the North and South. We would have to manage that directly with Westminster Ministers with whom we would probably be in a very uncomfortable relationship. We have a big problem with the Brexit issue but we have an even bigger problem with our immediate relations in the North. As Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, this is the Tánaiste's responsibility. What in the scenario I have just set out is likely to change? How can we avoid ending up with direct rule in three or four months? What can we do about it? Will we slowly sleepwalk into an incredible political crisis on this island, as well as between this island and the neighbouring one? Is there any hope of restoration at all?

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