Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is probably just me, but I find there is something extraordinarily ironic and surreal about this debate in this House tonight on the impact of Brexit on this country. We are talking about having to cut this and that, about how jobs would be lost and services curtailed and about the need to save funds. It is a bit like a throwback to the dire warnings of the austerity years. If only we had access to some sources of income to help us through this potential danger. If only we could get our hands on, for example, €14.3 billion, which is subject to a court case as we speak in Europe. I refer to money that is ours, that we were awarded, the so-called Apple tax. It has accumulated from €13 billion to €14.3 billion as it sits in the escrow account. We have spent more than €7 million on legal fees to defend this country against taking that money. How ridiculous do we look? In this period, when we are facing into all those dangers of job losses, farmers being hurt and Border communities being affected, we are saying, "No, thanks, we will defend Apple". We will defend the very wealthy 1% against the ordinary people of this country, North and South.

At the same time, the Government refuses to publish its plans. I do not believe, as other Deputies have said, that the Government does not have plans. I believe the Government has detailed plans and advice on what it envisages will happen in the case of a hard Brexit or crash-out. I believe they exist but that there is a refusal to publish them. For some bizarre communication policy of Fine Gael, just like it refused to publish details on CervicalCheck and other serious issues, it is refusing to publish the Government's advice and plans around the Brexit deal.

The British Government has published its plans. The British Government was forced to do so, and has published hard scenarios on its own people. The irony though - other Deputies mentioned the Yellowhammer report - is that all of the real hardship being suffered by the British people has completely gone under the radar for the past two years because of Brexit. Nobody ever hears mention of the housing crisis in Britain which, I believe, is deeper and worse, and more systemic, than ours; the health crisis; the crisis in education; the cuts to welfare; and the rise in suicide rates. There are deep issues at the heart of British society that we do not even hear about because of Brexit and I can understand why some sources in Britain want to get it over with so that they can start talking about the real issues that affect them.

What I really want to talk about is the preparation that the Government has for a hard Brexit. We do not know about that but what we are getting drip-fed is the preparation for a hard budget. Perhaps we will not be able to increase the social protection payments that our colleagues in Fianna Fáil say they want to see given. Perhaps we may not be able to give the Christmas bonus. There may be cutbacks in other aspects of public spending. I think that this is a cover for having made a bags of public expenditure, particularly on the overspend on the children's hospital and the national broadband plan.

It is a shame that the Tánaiste has left the Chamber because I wanted to ask him to explain the disparity between his take on a hard border and that of the Taoiseach. There are two leaders of the Government not disagreeing with each other publicly, but giving us different stories about what they mean by a hard border being imposed on us by either the EU or the Government, when we sat here in the Chamber, on I do not know how many times, and listened to the Taoiseach telling us explicitly there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland. We heard Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker tell us explicitly there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland but it looks as though we will be thrown under a bus by both the EU and the Fine Gael-led Government. The question I would have for the Tánaiste is, when is a hard border a hard border? Is it when it is 10 yd., 20 yd., 50 yd. or 100 yd., or maybe 10 m or 100 m away from the border? The Tánaiste says there may be need for temporary and emergency checks. If they are temporary, why do we need them at all? Then the Taoiseach told the British-Irish Chamber that there will be need for some level of checks on the Border. We need clarity on this point but we are not getting it. It is not even opposing parties who are feeding us different stories. It is the leadership of the Government. As was stated earlier on, tolerating a hard border cannot even be countenanced. There should be no return to a threat to our peace, stability and security on this island and any talk of putting border posts or checks along the Border, or even 100 yd. or 100 m away from it, cannot be tolerated.

Most importantly, the Government has to come clean on what advice, plans and impact analysis it has received from professionals, civil servants and legal opinion. The Government must come clean and tell the elected Members of this Parliament what it knows and perceives to be the case. The Government cannot keep it secret. There is a moral obligation on the Government to respect this House and let us know what it plans in the event of a hard Brexit. For example, a simple difficulty, which was pointed out to me by a friend who works in the milling industry in the North, is the question of how to find ways to stop a tariff being placed on flour from industrialised mills. There are three such mills in this country that mill flour on an industrial scale. Two of them are in the North and 60% of the output from the pair of them comes south. If there is a tariff of €172 per tonne to be put on that output, will we see a sharp rise in the price of bread?

What will the impact be for poorer families? The price of bread is notoriously and historically a trigger for all sorts of problems in an economy. Are we going to put that tariff on flour from Northern Ireland which produces our bread or are we going to locate the flour elsewhere and put a whole pile of workers in Northern Ireland out of work as a consequence? There are very detailed implications that we do not know about.

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