Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This will be my first contribution as Fianna Fáil spokesman on foreign affairs and Brexit. I join with the Acting Chairman in commending the Minister of State for her untiring efforts. I look forward to working with her for the good of the nation in the coming weeks and months.

I welcome the debate. The Fianna Fáil Party will support the motion. The draft withdrawal agreement reached between the EU and the UK, while far from perfect, represents a positive outcome for the entire island of Ireland. We all know there is no such thing as a good Brexit and the decision of the people of Great Britain is to be greatly regretted.

However, the withdrawal agreement provides sufficient protections to ensure there is no hard border on our island while upholding the Good Friday Agreement and the continuance of North-South co-operation. The Good Friday Agreement was approved by the Irish people, North and South. It ended decades of murder and mayhem. I am very proud of the part played by successive leaders of my party in bringing it about, particularly former Taoisigh Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern.

The peace is very fragile. Northern Ireland is an unnatural state. The communities are totally polarised without any signs of the meeting of minds that was envisaged by the architects of the Good Friday Agreement. The political vacuum in the North and the inability of the DUP and Sinn Féin to forge and maintain an effective Administration is deplorable. Regardless of the outcome of Brexit, we need to see the emergence of real politics, real engagement and real patriotism in the North. The onus is on the two leading parties and it is high time that they stepped up to the line and took responsibility. The Good Friday Agreement has empowered them alone to get on with the business of politics, if politics is really what they are about.

The proposed EU summit on 25 November is the next important staging post in the long, drawn-out Brexit crisis. Cabinet resignations, opposition from the Labour Party, the DUP and internal Conservative Party elements have created a very difficult task for the Prime Minister, Theresa May. This is a matter for the British people but Mrs. May is a doughty fighter and we wish her well in her efforts to have the deal ratified in Westminster.

I have already commented in the House on the total absence of nationalist participation in the crucial Westminster debate. There are seven empty seats in the House of Commons, spaces that were occupied by the likes of John Hume, Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan in the recent past. For decades, Sinn Féin Members refused to take their seats in Dáil Éireann. Now they are here. For decades, Sinn Féin did not recognise our nation’s Defence Forces, claiming allegiance to an army of its own. Now it accepts there is only one Óglaigh na hÉireann.For decades Sinn Féin repudiated the authority of the Garda Síochána and other legitimate instruments of the State. Now it states it has no problem with that either. Is it too much to expect that at this late stage, it would represent the decision of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland who voted to remain. Would it not support Northern Ireland's farmers and businessmen of both creeds who have been let down by the DUP? An opportunity has presented itself to Sinn Féin to repudiate sectarian politics and to work for the people of the North on all sides.

We in Fianna Fáil have been calling on the Government to prepare for the changes that will inevitably ensue from any Brexit deal for some time now. In the light of the precarious political situation in the UK, it is essential that the Government has detailed contingency plans for every and all outcomes. The withdrawal agreement is only the beginning. The future relationship between the UK and the EU still remains to be negotiated and the Government will need to be extremely vigilant in the weeks, months and even years ahead. Britain remains our single largest trading partner for the agrifood sector. We enjoyed a trade surplus of more than €1 billion in 2017. The Irish Exporters Association has called on the Government to increase contingency planning but to date there has been a relatively low take up of Brexit supports. As of October only €8.5 million out of the €300 million Brexit loan scheme has been sanctioned while only 137 grant applications had been approved by Enterprise Ireland. It is 3% of the possible total. Very few Irish SMEs have a Brexit plan in place. The figures are even worse in the North. The Government's Brexit road show seems to be more about spend than suffrage. There is no room for complacency as we are running out of time without any firm Brexit deal in place.

Every right-minded person in this country wants to see a good exit deal for ourselves, for the EU, for the North and last but not least for the UK. This is no time for gloating at the old enemy. It is not a scenario where England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity. Those days are over, Thank God. Some of the comments by the more Neanderthal elements of the Tory right can be very aggravating. Their knowledge of Ireland, North and South, is bordering on the infantile and the bizarre. That said it is to be regretted that Irish-British relations have deteriorated in the past number of years. My leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, has raised his concerns about this consistently. While acknowledging the work of the Tánaiste, the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, and the Government, we have a lot of work to do with our nearest neighbour. It is vital for the peace process and for future trade and commerce that we maintain the highest level of diplomatic contact and engagement with our nearest neighbour. The EU negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his team have to be commended on breaking the impasse and for acceding to the single EU-UK customs territory which was one of Mrs. May's key demands. Under these terms Northern Ireland would retain the benefits of EU membership along with continued access to the UK market. The knee-jerk reaction of the DUP to such a favourable and reasonable outcome for the North is hard to fathom. There is something essentially sad about it. Unionist insecurity is nakedly exposed, with its constant need for reassurance at the root of Mrs. May's difficulties. We have to understand unionist fears but without political dialogue between the communities in the North we will never make real progress. We are a long way from normalisation. This is no time, therefore, for the sectarian counting of heads. Calls for a Border poll now are reckless and counter-productive. Let us deal with the problem in hand and let us hope by March of next year we will have secured the basis for a whole new relationship between Britain and the European Union, Britain and Ireland and political progress in the North.

I commend the motion to the House.