Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It has already been said that we need supports, given the circumstances we are in and any possible circumstance we could be in as regards Covid-19 and the pandemic we are dealing with. Brexit and British rule in Ireland is the gift that does not stop giving.

I welcome some of what I was told earlier by the Minister for Foreign Affairs that a significant percentage, more than 90%, of businesses operating on a cross-Border and east-west level have dealt with revenue and customs and have their EORI numbers. There are many businesses that do not have the time or the wherewithal to organise this and we need to ensure people do what they can and do the checks they need to do for their supply chain logistics. We need to ensure this happens but at the end of the day we are dealing with something that is somewhere between a bad Brexit and an absolute nightmare Brexit. While we might only be dealing with a British Government gamble or a negotiating gambit we do not know this for sure. We need to ensure we maintain the international solidarity we are getting from the European Union, and that we maintain the same solidarity we are getting from Nancy Pelosi and Richard Neal in the US. This is absolutely vital. We need to keep the pressure on with regard to the British Government because we have the difficulty coming down the line of the internal market Bill combined with a possible finance Bill that is looking to circumvent the protections given in the withdrawal agreement and the Irish protocol.

Beyond this, the fact we are dealing with a circumstance and a British Government that does not care about hauliers or farmers, whether on the island of Ireland North or South, means we need to prepare for the only solution for the North-South relationship, which involves having a proper conversation about Irish unity and giving the people in the North a proper choice if we are down to a nightmare scenario where their choice will be to stay in the European Union or to stay in an utterly dysfunctional so-called United Kingdom.

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