Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In the short time available to me, I will concentrate my remarks on Brexit, although the Council meeting will cover a very wide agenda. This morning's briefings from Michel Barnier are not such as to give us great heart. Speaking yesterday to members of the European affairs committees of national parliaments, President von der Leyen reiterated the EU position that the continued access to the Single Market without quotas and tariffs demanded by Britain must be on the basis of accepting common standards and rules that are capable of being enforced. That is the simple position and it has been for months, but we seem not to be able to get beyond it. It is really now down to Boris Johnson, his true intention and his political judgment. Does he really want a deal? If the answer to that question is "yes", will he invest the political capital to achieve it?

Meanwhile, we must prepare for what is to come. I have raised the issue of connectivity on this island many times. I have been told repeatedly by the Department of Transport and the Irish Maritime Development Office that we have capacity. I was very glad to hear the announcement last Friday by one of the largest ferry companies in Europe, DFDS, that it will be providing a service from Rosslare to Dunkirk. I have been working with the Danish-based company for some time to establish this service, which will run six days per week. I understand it is heavily booked already, which belies the claim that there was adequate connectivity. Thank God there are companies willing to invest their own money to provide these services and we are not dependent on the planning being done by the authorities. I will have more to say on that elsewhere.

I read today that a House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts report on Brexit is scathing in its analysis of the UK's preparedness for Brexit. It identifies the risk of serious disruptions and delays at Channel ports which could potentially be catastrophic. In a most scathing attack on Boris Johnson's efforts in regard to preparing for Brexit, the chairman of the committee said, "A year after the oven-ready deal, we have more of a cold turkey..." Tony Connelly, RTÉ's excellent Europe editor, wrote an article this week on the implications of food chain supply issues between Ireland and the UK and between the UK and continental Europe. There are an immeasurable number of complicated issues still to address. We are as prepared as we can be but there will be lots of further issues that will emerge. We hope there will be a deal but, without one, we face real and substantial disruption. In that scenario, we will be very dependent on direct ferry routes off the island for a number of months from January. As I said, I am very glad there will now be 13 weekly direct continental sailings from Rosslare Europort to a variety of continental ports. I hope that will take significant pressure off the UK land bridge route should the potential chaos envisaged by the UK Committee of Public Accounts come to pass.

I want to comment briefly on fisheries. From the very beginning, this was never meant to be the final issue to be resolved. We discussed it at the stakeholders' forum from the start and the view was that it needed to be settled before we got into the final deal because it was the one issue on which the UK had a stronger hand than the EU rather than the other way around. I understand Ministers have been very clear in underscoring to the negotiating team that it is not to be left as the final stand-alone issue, in which scenario we could come off very badly. My understanding from a report in The Guardiantoday is that there is a revised presentation from the UK side offering 60% of catch demand, down from its previous offer of 80%. However, this remains very far off an acceptable mark.

Together with a resolution of the fisheries issue, the issue of agreeing common standards and rules that are capable of being enforced independently, as I have outlined, remains to be addressed. It is like Groundhog Day because we all have been saying that for a number of months. I believe in my heart that Boris Johnson is not so destructive of his own nation that he will want to inflict at least 2% additional harm on the growth potential of its economy over and above the Covid catastrophe. However, who knows? We need to be prepared for the very harmful consequences of that decision if it comes about.

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