Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will arrange the briefings with agreement by the parties to do that this week. My Department is already working on that and will probably be in touch with Opposition leaders' offices today around having those briefings.

I think we are at a very sensitive stage and I do not think anyone in this House, least of all me, wants to say anything that might jeopardise the acceptance of the Windsor Framework, so the only thing I would say is this. The Stormont brake is there, in many ways to counterbalance the consent mechanism that is already in the protocol. The protocol can be disapplied in full only by a vote of the assembly, and the Stormont brake tries to counterbalance that by having a mechanism whereby 30 members of the assembly, from two parties, can red-flag an issue with the UK Government to have it discussed in the joint committee and dealt with there, but that can be used only if the assembly is up and running. That is one thing to bear in mind, and all the more reason to have the assembly up and running.

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