Neale Richmond (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann notes the Report of the Seanad Special Select Committee on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union entitled "Brexit: Implications and Potential Solutions", copies of which were laid before Seanad Éireann on 30 June 2017.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, for coming to the House today and I wish her well in her very busy new brief.

The report of the Seanad Special Committee on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union is the product of nearly 50 hours of public meetings with a range of important stakeholders and interest groups. Since the people of the United Kingdom made their fateful decision to vote to leave the EU just over a year ago, we have been hit by a wall of noise looking at the various impacts that Brexit will have on Ireland, the UK, the EU and the wider world. What this report seeks to do is to provide a selection of possible solutions to some of the problems that have been highlighted. The report deliberately does not prioritise or exclude certain solutions. Literally everything that was suggested by witnesses or through written statements has been included in this report. It is ultimately up to the European Commission, negotiating on behalf of all 27 remaining EU member states, to take on board what it deems feasible. As a committee, we took the decision that while some of the proposed solutions might be quite easy to implement, others might not be suitable, while it is aspects or parts of other suggested solutions that might be best placed to be used in the final agreement.

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few areas from the report that look at solutions that I believe are low-hanging fruit, issues where there are apparently simple solutions that will be mutually beneficial to all involved. The first of these relates to air travel. As was pointed out again by Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary, in the European Parliament just yesterday, it is vital that an early EU-US-UK open skies agreement is agreed. This must be done in advance of the actual Brexit in order to allow 2019 schedules to be sold into the market in 2018.

Another early agreement that can and should be sorted very quickly is a revised version of the existing tripartite agreement between Ireland, the UK and France covering the horse racing industry. It is also vital that all efforts are made to secure Ireland’s future energy requirements through the speedy completion of the proposed Celtic interconnector between Ireland and France.

While I know the suggestion met with a bit of push-back from the Central Bank, I still maintain that we need a more aggressive and co-ordinated approach to attracting financial services to Ireland from the City of London in the post-Brexit era. We need to attract as many of these jobs and companies as possible in order to offset the overall negativity of Brexit. The proactive role being played by the Central Bank of Luxembourg cannot be dismissed.

We on the committee would share the view of many that there is a deep challenge in making the Border with Northern Ireland work as smoothly as it does now. We were reassured by engagement with officials from the Department of Justice and Equality and others that while they may not be fully formed yet, there is clear scope for solutions to be found when it comes to the movement of people across the Border. How to make the movement of goods work is much harder. We know that no one wants the imposition of a customs border with all the trappings, and somehow we have to find a way to make it so. The committee looked at a number of different potential solutions, some of which may currently be seen as naive, but we would be clear that they all need to stay on the table, such as, for example, the UK, or at the very least Northern Ireland, remaining within the customs union or Single Market, or joining the EEA, either in the long term or the short term.

One theme that came through clearly is the level of uncertainty out there in which people and organisations are having to make decisions. The negotiators already have a very short time in which to complete their work and it is quite likely they will go to the very last minute. That is to be expected. However, it is unconscionable that people and organisations would live with this level of uncertainty for two years and then, within just weeks, have to implement radical change to their lives or to how they operate as organisations. Depending on the final solution, it seems only logical that the more radical the change, the more there would be a need for a transition period or a phasing-in period - the name does not matter, but there must be time for people to prepare properly. All sectors of the economy need to prepare. The committee believes that many of them are taking stock of their level of exposure but they also need to be helped to do that, which means appropriate supports must be put in place by the Government.

I am sure my colleagues from the committee will raise a number of key issues that arose from this report in the context of our work over the past few months. Before they do, I would like to place on the record of the House my gratitude to the committee clerk and her secretariat for all the assistance they have given to the committee over the past number of months, particularly as this was done on top of their existing work. To conclude, I would like to offer my thanks to the members of the committee and all the substitute members for the proactive and imaginative approach they took to this committee and the collegial manner adopted by all that allowed us to conclude our work with some ease.