Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber for the latest of several discussions on Brexit in this House. I commend the Government's action before the referendum in doing as much as it possibly could to speak to the Irish community in Britain and all British voters about the importance of this issue for Irish people. However, no message should go out from this or any chamber which does not state clearly that Brexit is an absolute, complete and unmitigated disaster. When the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Flanagan, came to the House, I talked about the importance of European connectivity, noted that the EU has in general been a force for good, born out of the ashes of the Second World War, and that we must re-evaluate the European project. The UK exit from the Union, at the behest of the people of England and Wales, is a disaster for Ireland and the EU. As Senator Mac Lochlainn rightly noted, it was narrow-minded nationalism and the whims of a small group which took over the mindset and mainstream of British politics and led to this disaster. That mindset is being replicated, unfortunately, across the world.

The regional development committee, of which I am a member, recently received a delegation from Blacklion in County Cavan. I was interested to hear about Senator Black's connections with that area, particularly as own mother is from Blacklion and my grandfather was an IRA volunteer in the Civil War. He was imprisoned, went on hunger strike and escaped before spending the rest of his life as a customs officer on the Border, which was an ironic change of career. My mother recalls there being a time zone difference between North and South during the Second World War. The delegates from Blacklion told us that Brexit has already had a devastating impact on their community. People who were envisaging buying homes in Cavan and working in Enniskillen are pulling out left right and centre, with their plans for their future and raising their families in disarray.

In recent years, because we have come to a collective complacency around peace in Europe and peace on this island, we never envisaged that this would happen. A case currently before the High Court in Belfast, which Senator Ó Donnghaile has mentioned in the House, involves a challenge by all but one of the major political parties in the North to the constitutional validity of what the British Government has done. Their argument is that it requires a vote of Parliament in order for Brexit to proceed and that no such vote has taken place. I am interested to hear the Minister's view on that case.

I welcome the Government's announcement that an all-party forum will take place at the beginning of next month. We in this House are national politicians and we must think of the country as a whole. The Border region will be particularly affected by this issue. In our negotiations and discussions about what happens next, we must be mindful of that impact. The message needs to go out from the Government to all our European partners that this no small deal. If any other EU member state has sympathy with what Britain has done or feels there might be some political advantage in going down that road itself, we must say to it that this has been an unmitigated disaster. We cannot say there are advantages in it for Ireland. The message from this country must be that this was a right-wing conspiracy which has gone belly-up and will cause untold misery economically and socially across the Continent.