Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

What is the point in encouraging Irish firms to move their trade from the UK, to source their raw materials from anywhere other than the UK and instruct businesses to try fellow EU countries to broaden their horizons and find alternative markets? The Government is constantly telling Irish firms to prepare, only for it to then not play its part in ensuring a riskless transportation operation in which they can do so.

A former political adviser told me this week that the Government strategy's is not one of risk management but of crisis management. In adopting a strategy of allowing a crisis to evolve instead of preventing it, the Government is fettering the EU in terms of its ability to negotiate and putting us at risk. Jobs and businesses are being put at risk all because the Government's attitude is that it is better to have a crisis to manage than not have a crisis at all. A crisis is not good for the country. To allow one to manifest itself in order that the Government can display its crisis management skills is unconscionable. Businesses, jobs, farmers, fishermen and hauliers are all at risk because of the Government's strategy. We need to get out of the business of crisis management and into the business of risk management and crisis prevention.

The Government is allowing a crisis to develop to ensure that it can get more bang for its buck on political payday by displaying its crisis management skills instead of heading it off at the pass. Since I have become involved in politics, I have noted it is all about crisis management. Dare I say it but the Government is getting plenty of experience. Its strategy is costing the country a fortune in terms of housing, health and Covid. It is across all Departments. We have a crisis in forestry. Everything the Government does involves firefighting.

Good managers are the ones one does not hear from while bad managers are the ones one hears from every day because they are out explaining themselves. The Government is full of them. This needs to stop. We need a good manager to ensure we have a riskless transportation alternative to the UK land bridge and such an alternative, as the Government has been told by everyone in the know, is a fast, efficient, daily, direct ferry service from Rosslare to mainland Europe. Those in the know are not the civil servants or the Department Secretaries General. They are the operators who safeguard the exports and imports of the country. It brings us to the old saying that a chain is only as good as its weakest link. To ensure our exporters and importers can make the most of their opportunities, all the links in the chain need to be strong. There needs to be recognition that, after Brexit, Ireland is geographically much more isolated within the EU. That requires transportation solutions so our economy’s potential is not stunted by geography and distance and by the Government’s failure to prepare, as it would prefer to manage the crisis it is allowing to develop.

Here is a map. There is little old Ireland, 300 miles from mainland Europe, as it will be after the transition period. It includes only EU countries on the map, not the UK, and it should bring it home to the decision-makers just how geographically isolated Ireland is from the rest of the EU. We are out on a limb. The map clearly show the importance of good transportation links to negate that geographical disadvantage.

The Government must be able to see these things. If the Minister of State does not see them, it is time he went to Specsavers. Leaving our naked vulnerability there for this UK Government to attack and coerce us with is like a boxer fighting while voluntarily holding one hand behind his back. It is madness and so is the Government’s crisis management strategy. Businesses and Brexit go hand in hand and so do jobs and livelihoods. The Government needs to practice what it preaches and start to prepare with the knowledge it has. Please start the crisis prevention.

See this speech in context