Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have only been dealing with Covid-19 and its impacts for a year now, whereas Brexit feels like the never-ending saga. It is almost five years since the Brexit vote. It has taken five years to get us to this point where an EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement was finally agreed by negotiators on Christmas Eve 2020 and was provisionally applicable from 1 January 2021. At that time, the EU was given until 28 February 2021 to ratify the agreement. This involves the complex legal text being translated and there are reports that an extension will be sought until the end of April.

One of the pieces of literature available online is the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement - A New Relationship with Big Changes - Overview of Consequences and Benefits. It is a two-page bullet-pointed synopsis of EU-UK relations. In the Trade and Goods section, for example, it states a consequence of the UK leaving the EU is that the "UK goods no longer benefit from free movement of goods, leading to more red tape for businesses and adjustments in EU-UK supply chains." However, it points out that a benefit of there being an agreement means "Zero tariffs or quotas on goods traded, ensuring lower prices for consumers - provided agreed rules of origin are met." It seems as childish as the "Good Idea - Bad Idea" skit on "Animaniacs".

The agreement is necessary for both the UK and members of the EU. Much of the conversation about the impact of Brexit on our island is rightly about the threat to peace and the return of a hard border on the island. Many of the day-to-day impacts are on the people working in the fishing industry; people who did not swop over their drivers' licences; websites with a ".ie" domain which use a UK company for distribution; and NGOs reliant on EU funding etc. These are just a few examples of issues that have been highlighted in recent weeks. The wider impacts have yet to be seen and we also have the double-whammy of Brexit plus Covid-19 level 5 restrictions to deal with.

Regarding security and thematic co-operation, the two-page document states a consequence of the UK leaving the EU is that the "UK no longer participates in or shapes rules of EU agencies for police and judicial cooperation (Europol, Eurojust) and no longer benefits from privileged cooperation amongst police and judicial authorities". However, it lists benefits of this agreement including "Arrangements for a strong cooperation between national police and judicial authorities of the UK and Member States, including on surrender."

Late last year, Dr. Vicky Conway, produced a very useful paper on Brexit and cross-border policing. In the paper, Dr. Conway raised excellent points about the relationship between An Garda Síochána and the PSNI and the mechanisms which have been used to strengthen cross-border policing and security co-operation on the island of Ireland, particularly in areas such as child protection. How will these now be impacted by Brexit?

A very worrying part of the impact of the trade deal is the fiasco that we have seen this week regarding UK-registered fishing vessels operating in Irish waters. How could the Government in the three years since the Brexit deal not have considered this issue? It has meant that fishermen have had to push and lobby to have a realistic operating procedure put in place. With the announcement on Monday, the Minister has moved to allay some of the problems but is this all that he could come up? This will go on for a long time yet. When we consider that fishing and quotas were to the fore in every discussion about Brexit over the last three years, how did this situation arise? In what other Departments and areas could other problems arise? What has the Government been doing over the last three years if this is what we get?

When we look at how the quota situation was dealt with, we see that the problems are even bigger with the Government and the Department. It seems that the fishery organisations decided to team up with the coastal states to protect our fishing rights. The State also seems to have done so and that really worked out well for us and our fishing communities, as we can see. We have ended up losing 15% of our fishing quotas which translates to 24% of mackerel which is particularly bad because we could have caught all our mackerel quota within Irish waters if we wanted too. However, the Government and fishing organisations insisted that we could not mention that. Let us now consider where it has got us.

At least if the Government had the guts to say that we are going to sell fishing down the tubes to get other things, we might have some respect for that stance. If our so-called partners had said if we had wanted them to support the Good Friday Agreement, they wanted our fishing to go, it might be explainable. However, the Government is constantly selling the line that we are all in it together, which is simply not the case. If the Minister were serious about that, he would announce today that he would push for a complete renegotiation of the Common Fisheries Policy, but I doubt he will do that.

For this reason, I will not support this deal.

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