Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Tánaiste is aware, the Brexit situation is getting worse, not better. That is the general consensus. We saw the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, here in Dublin last week. His visit was all bluff and bluster. In the European Parliament today, Nigel Farage engaged in a very similar act, which played out as if his party's MEPs were in a theatre, rather than discussing issues that are affecting the lives of British citizens and citizens across Europe, particularly in Ireland.

The central issue in all of this is that Brexit was conceived and born in the British Parliament, yet the British Parliament has disassociated itself from it. It is everyone's fault except that of its own members. The problems we are most concerned about are cross-Border issues. I was given an example the other day when speaking to somebody in the health service here who was sending a person to Northern Ireland for a particular service that is not available here.

One of the issues they have at the moment is that the contracts that are in place are based on overarching EU contracts. For instance, the whole issue around data protection and patient confidentiality is uncertain in this regard in the event of a hard Brexit, which is only a few weeks away. These are real things which affect real people's lives here.

The whole issue of border controls is something that comes up all of the time. Speaking to people in the part of the world where I come from, nobody is prepared to accept border controls returning the way they were before under any circumstances. That is the clear view of people without anyone having any political axe to grind. They simply do not and will not accept it, no matter who or where they are. That is something that needs to be clearly set out.

The backstop is there as simply a minimum level of regulatory alignment which we can put in place in the absence of or until a full or comprehensive agreement is in place. While the British Government, the DUP and others are fighting this big battle about the backstop, the truth is that the backstop will never be necessary if they come to a proper agreement in its aftermath. It is all a false war. It brings us to a situation where we have to ask when we reach October and go into the new year, we may have a crash-out or we may not, but whatever we have we are going to have a Brexit, and it is not going to be good for Ireland.

There are going to be difficulties as we move into the future. As a society we need to be examining the future of Ireland, North and South. In that context, one of the things that the Government clearly needs to do is to set up a cross-party Oireachtas committee to look at what the future of Ireland will be and where we are going. What kind of Ireland would we like to see if and when we have a border poll, because clearly one is going to happen at some point. Everybody is talking about it, even if people in this House do not want to talk about it. It is coming. We need to sit down and work out what sort of transition arrangements we want to put in place. How will that be funded? Where would the European Union come into this? As it assisted with the reunification of Germany, how would it assist with the reunification of Ireland? How would we set out the kind of principles that would be in place to protect the identity of everyone on the island? These are the kinds of conversations that we need to start having now. It is time this Government put in place an Oireachtas committee to deal with those issues and to start that conversation which everyone else is having. It really has to be had, however, centrally here so that we can put in place something so that the Irish people can see that their future is secure. That security is going to be in a new Ireland in which we can all be part of a European Union.

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