Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see the Minister return to us again for what is almost her weekly round of the House at this stage. As the Minister has outlined, there are many serious implications, but this is not of Ireland's doing. I will outline some of the things we are trying to keep an eye on. Our unique relationship with Britain has been built up over years. Safeguarding the work and progress made in the peace process is evidently going to be one of the key points. The prospect of going back to a hard Border is a serious concern for everyone involved. All these issues have to be teased out, and we will have to wait to see what will realistically happen in practice. That is the key thing that we have to get around.

I am disappointed that the First Minister in the North was not as keen on certain proposals. Perhaps it was not handled as well as it could have been by the Government, although I am not getting political about it. The prospect of an all-Ireland forum to discuss Brexit was suggested as the way forward, but politically it did not work out for whatever reason. It would have been a great help if we had all tried to sing off the same hymn sheet. Perhaps it was never going to be that simple.

The common travel area is going to be an area of concern and Brexit is feeding in to that. Our strong trade links with the UK are vital. We know the figures. In agriculture, 55% of our beef exports are to the United Kingdom as are 30% of our dairy exports. These are concerning figures.

I am curious about two points, and the Minister might consider discussing them with her Cabinet colleagues. The Minister hit on the point about the money available in the budget from 2019 onwards. I was a little disappointed that there was nothing more forthcoming in the budget to put more money into the system and to front-load it and in some way do a little more. Since this is such a serious issue, there is another thing we should have looked at. Britain has done it, and I suppose it had to because it is going to affect the people there directly and it was their decision. We should have appointed a junior Minister or made a position to deal with Brexit. It would have shown how serious and earnest we were. As we know, it is probably going to have the most serious economic impact, apart from cultural and social impact and so on. We will see a new shifting landscape in time to come. We could have appointed a junior Minister to deal with this specifically, if not a full Ministry. These are some points the Minister might take on board.