Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I too am glad to be back to debating Brexit. I will deal with a technical point first. I found the stakeholders forum on Brexit a very helpful and informative forum both for me and all politicians, but it is not a great idea to have both on the same day. Having statements in the House means that Members who are not Dublin based, like me, could not participate in it. I say that for future reference.

If Ireland, like the rest of the world, had not been overtaken and overwhelmed by the Covid-19 crisis it is quite clear that Brexit would still be dominating the debate and discourse here. The problem is that since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis matters have not only not progressed but we are now in an incredible and dangerous position of dealing with a UK Government in denial as time slips by. The UK committed itself to a protocol, to have a transition arrangement and to have negotiations for future relationships sorted by the end of the transition period. We have less than two months to achieve a settlement. Most people who are directly involved in the negotiations believe it is not going to happen and that it is impossible given the current mindset of the British Government for it to happen. We must be alert to that and talk openly about it. The Tánaiste in his utterances always uses the measured phraseology of Iveagh House, which is right and proper, but there is a fundamental reality now when one hears the commentary of people such as the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Mr. Gove, which is basically moving backwards, not forwards, in respect of matters that are of fundamental importance to us.

If we do not have an agreement within the next two months, and there is a fixation in the current position of the British Government to have no extension of the transition arrangements beyond the end of this year, all the brinkmanship, negotiations and the late hours - I happened to be in Brussels on the day the agreement was finally made - would come to naught. What we have worked assiduously for, and what the Tánaiste's fantastic team has worked so well with the Barnier team to achieve, will all be set at naught.

Our first objective, therefore, is to press the UK, including our unionist friends in Northern Ireland, for an extension of the transition arrangements. It ought to be realised that the fixation on achieving the exit of Britain, even from the transition arrangements, at the expense of rational economic planning is just not good politics. It is not the way rational governments operate. We need to persuade the UK to go beyond the end of this year. Perhaps that is in train and maybe there is an associated matter of timing, but we have to have our cards a little more face up in regard to these issues.

I will ask specific questions on these matters when I get an opportunity later. If what the British Government wants - to have unfettered access to our markets at no cost to itself, with the right to undermine all our standards and demolish what is euphemistically known as the level playing field - is taken at face value, it cannot be and will not be because the Single Market would not exist on that basis. What is our plan B if that is to be the fixed position?

Let me refer to another issue, which will be raised in questions later, and let me put it in a crude way that the Tánaiste probably could not put it. In terms of our negotiating stance, the ace cards are held by the European Union in all the trade portfolios except one, namely fisheries, in respect of which it is acknowledged that the UK has a stronger hand - to put it in playing card terms. On that basis, it was always going to be an integrated negotiation; we were never going to segregate out, but now the argument coming from the UK, if I hear it correctly, is that it wants to negotiate sector by sector. That must not be. I hope the Tánaiste will make it crystal clear that the latter will not be allowed.

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