Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are some good questions there and I will try and answer them as directly as I can. The prospects for the next round of negotiations, on the basis of the evidence so far, are not good. Now that the Prime Minister is healthy again and making decisions, we must hope that he will instruct his negotiating team, through David Frost, to ensure that the negotiations on this matter, which start next week, will be more successful than those undertaken previously. The approaches being taken by the UK and EU sides are totally different and we must take that into account.

The EU is consistent with what we have been saying for months, and consistent with what was said in the political declaration around the future relationship, which was supposed to set the scene for this negotiation. It said that we need a comprehensive agreement that involves multiple different areas that are all interconnected from a level playing field to fishing, to market access, to ensuring tariff-free and quota-free trade and a range of other things. The UK has decided to take a different approach, that is, to break it up into different segments and negotiate them separately, picking the ones that are most important to it for now. The EU cannot do a deal on that basis. The negotiating team do not have the mandate to negotiate on that basis, and the UK knows that. I hope the approach will be somewhat different next week so that we can take a more pragmatic approach towards trying to make progress and, at least by the time we get to the end of June, be able to make an assessment that has a prospect of success in the second half of the year because at the moment that looks very different.

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