Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It has to be all but that applies to Sinn Féin as well. Sinn Féin needs to adhere to international agreements, the Good Friday Agreement being one of them. I do not believe Sinn Féin should have collapsed the Executive over a heating initiative but it did. We were without an Assembly and an Executive for three years. This cuts all ways.

I do not believe in or agree with what Boris Johnson or the British Government did. I have made that very clear to him. It is wrong. One should not breach agreements, which were signed up to internationally, in the withdrawal treaty or the Northern Ireland protocol. One should not do that. It is wrong. It undermines credibility and erodes trust. I am working with the European Union leadership in our response to this, which is firm and is carefully calibrated not to play into any particular initiative or ploy that the British Government may be pursuing. We believe the joint committee is where the British Government needs to resolve any issues it may have with the working of the protocol and those issues were being worked out fairly amicably prior to the sudden publication of the Bill and its offending clauses.

I take exception to Deputy McDonald playing politics with this all the time, though that is the nature of her party. For example, she said that I gave the impression that the Good Friday Agreement was optional extra. I did not give that impression at all. The Deputy threw in the line about me saying a referendum was an optional extra but I never said that.

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