Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as a cur i láthair. Tá mé buartha gur chaill mé é. I am sorry I missed the Minister's contribution in the Chamber but I read through it subsequently.

I will avoid going into the whole broader politics of Brexit with the Minister because we have debated that issue at length, and some may even accuse us of debating it ad nauseamover the last few weeks. It is something I raised consistently before the Brexit vote. I am getting to the point now where we need to get beyond the long-fingering and the benign bland statements, "We do not know, we are preparing, we are talking." I am not advocating a haphazard, knee-jerk or reactive approach to this, but the negative implications of Brexit are happening now. They are happening today, they were happening yesterday, and last week and last month, and there is much worse ahead of us. I am not the only one who has that view. Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of his famous lyrics is: "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows." The wind is blowing very much against our favour in this regard, and it is blowing very coldly and, unfortunately, very loudly from a Tory Administration in London, which does not give two damns about the welfare of anywhere beyond the south east of England, let alone the north east of Ireland.

I would like to use this opportunity with the Minister present not to grandstand around the political implications of Brexit but to draw from the response at the weekend rallies along the Border, which were very well attended, and I took great heart from the fact that they were very broadly attended. There were people there from every community. There were people there from a broad range of political parties. People spoke from the platform at the rally I was at on the Louth-Armagh border, people from the trade union movement, the community and voluntary sector, the agricultural sector and the chambers of commerce, North and South.

A number of tweets were put up during the course of that rally. I want to refer to a few of them. They include the following tweets: £4.4 billion of business is done by businesses in the South with businesses in Britain; 60% of produce sold from the North is sold to EU member states; 30% of milk produced in the North is processed in the South; has England not learned that imposing an English solution on an Irish situation is doomed to failure; and does Nigel Farage represent us?

They also include the following comments: 40% of farmers' produce in the South goes to Britain, what will added tariffs do to working farming families? Other tweets include the following: EU peace funding helps some of the most marginalised in our society into employment, improves connectively, assists carers, I do not think we are going to get a replacement of those funds from the British Chancellor; and the scary thing in all of this is the British never planned for this, they are flying blind and that is very dangerous.

The following is a tweet from the representative form the Dundalk Chamber of Commerce: we do not want to see Newry boom and bust, we do not want to see Dundalk boom and bust, we want to see both of them grow and proposer together, this is going to put small businesses along the Border out of business, it is as simple as that. This Brexit is four square, head on a challenge to the future well-being of us all. With the Good Friday Agreement, the British and Unionists have constitutionally recognised that the North is not like Norfolk or Devon. This Brexit will be a crisis that risks reversing all the progress we have made here. As everyone knows, regardless of the common travel area here in the past, the Border was hard, what broke that was joint membership of the EU and the advance of our peace process. How do the proponents of Brexit think it will help employment regeneration and welfare in this region? Anyone concerned about the future economic welfare of this island should be worried.

One comment that struck me was the contribution of one business leader who highlighted the hypocrisy of Brexiteers when they tell us there will be no return to a Border of the past when the whole raison d'êtreof their Brexit campaign was about borders. It is exactly what they have done.

I will finish on the following point.The community along the Border has been quiet on this issue for too long, but that is the end of that. We now have a mobilised, organised, energised and above all concerned broad range of society, North and South, who are making it very clear that the economic and social implications are massive and tangible, and, back to my original point, they are live and ongoing.

Many messages have been advocated on the floor of this Chamber and rightfully should go from this Chamber. Senator Mac Lochlainn made clear the benefit of exploring the Kurt Hübner report into Irish unification.

The Minister mentioned other issues regarding InterTradeIreland. I ask her to expand on the role she envisages for InterTradeIreland as opposed to just saying it will have an important one; that goes without saying.

The most important message is that 56%, a majority, of people in the North voted to remain. That should be our stance and the stance of the Government.