Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh míle maith agat. I was at the presentation at the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. I am trying to keep a lot of balls in the air today.

I welcome the Minister to the House. At the outset I congratulate the Minister on the work he is doing on Brexit. After that I will start to take things apart.

Let me put it in context. There is a great deal of talk about nationalism in Northern Ireland. It is no secret that I spent five years of my life in the British army, in the Royal Irish Rangers. It is also no secret that Sinn Féin voted for me to have me elected to this House. I have no axe to grind with Sinn Féin and I never had. I would not have seen eye to eye with the IRA down through the years.

One of the things that has frightened me considerably is a rise in polarisation in the North. For the first time, in as far as I can remember, I was attacked recently on social media by a member of the Unionist community, telling me to keep my "effing" nose out of northern affairs. I was so delighted when I saw some of my Unionist pals kick in and say: "Hey, back off. This man has no interest in trying to colonise or take over the North of Ireland." I have no doubt that the North and the South will be unified at some stage, but I am not advocating for it as a result of Brexit. I want to have due regard to our friends and colleagues who are of the Unionist tradition who want to remain in Britain. Nonetheless they signed up to the Good Friday Agreement and they are as much a part of the Good Friday Agreement as we are and as our Catholic friends, or at least they should be. I know that certain things in the recent past would call that into question. Like most Members who have spoken here today have mentioned, the former deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, has played the greatest role as the leader of the Nationalist group in Northern Ireland. I have the greatest admiration for the man. I think he did a good job.

This brings me to an issue I raised on the Order of Business, where I requested the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to address the issue following the Supreme Court ruling. I was told the Minister would be in the House today so I did not press the issue.The Supreme Court was asked to consider the question of whether any provision of the Northern Ireland Act, read together with the Belfast agreement and the British-Irish agreement, meant that primary legislation was required before notice of triggering Article 50 could be given. The Supreme Court, in paragraph 131 of its judgment, found:

[It] is unquestionably right, however, to claim that the NI Act conferred rights on the citizens of Northern Ireland. Sections 6(2)(d) and 24(1), in imposing the EU constraints, have endowed the people of Northern Ireland with the right to challenge actions of the Executive or the Assembly on the basis that they are in breach of EU law.

The Good Friday Agreement confers rights on Northern Ireland citizens which will vanish in two years' time with no recourse. Amending the Good Friday Agreement is not the concern of the European Union. As we go through our negotiations, we are one of 27, but the 27 collectively has no interest in the Good Friday Agreement other than what the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and his fellow Ministers can bring to the table. Neither is it the unilateral concern of the British state, which brings Theresa May into the picture. It is the concern of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the elected Executive of Northern Ireland. We now find that we are coming back to the tripartite arrangement that led to the Good Friday Agreement. We cannot allow a situation to arise where Theresa May triggers Article 50 without first enshrining the Good Friday Agreement in primary legislation. If that requires the Irish Government taking the British Government to the European Court of Justice before Article 50 is triggered, then so be it. We must take every possible step.

I am somewhat concerned by the benign statement that came from the Minister's office following the UK Supreme Court decision. When I was young, my mother told me to be quiet and my uncle would look after me. I was quiet all of my life but my uncle died and left me nothing. Are we sitting quietly in the background, hoping it will be all right on the night? I do not think it is going to be all right on the night. I have met parliamentarians from all over Europe, some of whom are very sympathetic to our situation but, by and large, they are concerned about their own countries and whether they will be able to sell their Volkswagens, Fiats, Bosch washing machines and so forth. That is their concern and rightly so.

A colleague of mine recently asked a member of the European Commission about the possibility of relocating various European agencies to Dublin. The answer he got was: "Get in the queue". Following Brexit, we are an island sitting out on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, far removed from the UK and mainland Europe. We now have a hostile US Administration. While there is a good chance that we will see high-quality financial services jobs coming to Dublin, given the work of the Ministers for Finance, and Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Taoiseach, what will happen to the 41% of our agricultural produce that is sold in the UK if we lose part of that market? It is not easy to take a farm-hand or a production operator in an agrifood business and transfer him or her into IT or financial services.

I have some serious concerns. The time has come for the Taoiseach to make a state of the nation address to explain to the people of Ireland exactly where we are and to outline the work the Government is doing all over Europe to ensure we have the smoothest transition possible.

I am sorry if it seems that I am taking a negative view. I am sure the Minister will put me right when he gets to his feet. I thank him for taking the time to listen to me.