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

I thank the Deputies for their questions. Over the past two years, there have been several intense attempts to re-establish the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement - the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive and, of course, the North-South Ministerial Council. The North-South bodies continue to operate, as with the British-Irish Council meeting regularly. It will meet again in Dublin; I will be hosting it in Dublin next month. The British-Irish Intergovernmental Council, BIIGC, has been operating periodically as well. However, those strand one and strand two bodies - the Assembly, the Executive and the North-South Ministerial Council - have not operated now for about 1,000 days. There have been several intense attempts to get them going again. The Tánaiste has been particularly engaged in that work. Indeed, he will be in Northern Ireland tomorrow again, having been there, I think, probably every week for the past two years. Obviously, I have done it at Head of Government level as well both with Prime Minister May and Prime Minister Johnson.

Ultimately, the way strand one works is that, to have the Assembly and Executive functioning, one needs the largest party of unionism and the largest party of nationalism on board at the same time. That, regrettably, has not been possible to date. We have come very close on occasion and were particularly close in February of this year. We are not going to give up. It is complicated by, first of all, Brexit and, second, the possibility of elections in Westminster, which may happen in the next couple of months, but we will keep at it.

Deputy Micheál Martin asked about the nature of the future relationship between the UK and the EU, including Ireland, and its impact on east-west trade. There are lots of different published projections as to what things would look like in different scenarios, but they are only-----

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