Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Many questions have been asked. I would like to make a few comments to provide clarity. Some quite generalised statements were made to the effect that we are not sufficiently prepared or that there is not enough detail. I suggest that anyone who has read the document we published on 19 December will see that while it does not have all the answers, it certainly has a lot of detail. We could not publish the contingency planning document until the European Commission had released a series of documents and memos on planning for a no-deal Brexit in areas of EU competence like aviation and road haulage, which it did that afternoon. It would not have made much sense for us to have produced a document dealing with up to 20 different sectoral areas, in great detail in some cases, until we could show we had answers in the cases of sectors that would be vulnerable in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The haulage licensing sector is an obvious example. The temporary solution we have until the end of the year to enable EU hauliers to access the UK, and vice versa, involves the waiving of the licensing requirements that would normally apply to a third country. In aviation, the safety certification of British airports will be extended beyond the date of a no-deal Brexit, again on a temporary basis, to facilitate point-to-point access into the EU from the UK for non-EU airlines.

These are the kinds of practical things where there is real detail. Ireland cannot provide that detail on its own - it needs to be provided by the EU collectively. Approximately 80 contingency plan papers have come from the Commission at different times. Most of that is contained in our rulebook around contingency planning, which is evolving and changing all the time. We built on the detail of that last week by bringing four memos to the Government, one of which dealt with access to medicines. As long as Britain retains its access as a member of the EU, between 70% and 80% of all medicines in Ireland will continue to come here from the UK or through the UK. After Britain leaves the EU, many of those products will need to have a different route into Irish pharmacies and Irish hospitals because they will no longer have the authorisation of the EU Medicines Agency in Britain. Therefore, we may have to look for alternative routes to market. Last week, the Minister, Deputy Harris, provided a lot of reassurance inside and outside the Cabinet that there will be a continued supply of medicines beyond 29 March in the event of Britain crashing out of the EU.

We have also dealt with the complexity of the transportation of goods to and from this island. The vast majority of goods that come to Ireland come via the UK landbridge. Every year, approximately €21 billion worth of trade comes on and off this island via roll-on, roll-off haulage. Helpfully, the UK has committed to signing up to the international transport convention, which essentially allows a container to be sealed in Dublin, taken across Britain as a landbridge and brought back into the Single Market in France or the Netherlands without being checked. That does not solve a potential traffic jam in Dover which could be many kilometres in length. There is concern that we need to have contingency plans to get goods to and from this island, without being able to use the landbridge that is the UK, in as efficient and timely a manner as we do today. There have been detailed discussions between the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and shipping companies to look at issues around capacity and access points, etc. Likewise, infrastructure is being put in place as we speak at Dublin Port, Rosslare Europort and Dublin Airport, which are the three key access points into Ireland from the UK, to ensure we can, if we need to, comply with the necessary EU requirements around customs checks, sanitary and phytosanitary checks and health checks, etc. from 29 March. We are going into a great deal of detail in what exactly we are doing with regard to parking bays, inspection bays, staffing numbers, ICT systems and so on.

We have also outlined what is needed in terms of legislation. By the way, this is not being done at the last minute. The Cabinet signed off on the heads of the legislation today. As nine Departments are involved, some presentational work is required before it can be published as a collective Bill. That will be done before the end of this week. The legislation will then go to the legal draftsperson. The target date for its publication is 22 February. I was asked whether we are factoring in enough time, in the event of amendments being made in the Seanad, to allow the legislation to go back to the Dáil to be finalised. That is a perfectly valid question. We hope to conclude Committee, Report and Final Stages in the Seanad on 13 and 14 March. This would provide enough time to go back to the Dáil the following week, if necessary, to finalise the legislation so that it can be signed before the end of March.We have factored in a little cushion room at the end, but we need to be disciplined as a Parliament in both Houses to pass emergency legislation if necessary.

There are some experienced legislators among the Senators who will understand what we are doing. An example of the situation is the current conditions of cross-Border healthcare, where people from Donegal go to Altnagelvin hospital and children travel from Belfast to Dublin for specialist paediatric care. We need to ensure we protect that kind of normalisation which we have created on this island, where we share health infrastructure in a way that makes sense both North and South of the Border. That seamless relationship of health provision which works for everybody is the kind of matter that we will have to legislate for because we will no longer operate in a Single Market, customs union and shared Union in a way that does not involve borders for goods, services or people.

The issue is the same for students. We must ensure the Government can continue to support Irish students going to university or college in the UK, British nationals coming here and so on. Likewise, basic services such as cross-Border transport, including rail networks and the train from Dublin to Belfast, will travel from the EU to outside the EU before returning. We take these circumstances for granted in a Union but we will need to legislate for them in the context of a no-deal Brexit.

In important areas such as welfare provision or pension provision, many people in Ireland receive part of their income from a British pension, while many Irish people in the UK receive part of their income every week from an Irish pension. That is all part of EU common recognition, the necessary EU directives and so on, but we will have to replace some of those measures with legislation in both the UK and Ireland and a bilateral understanding to ensure a continuation of income post Brexit. People do not even think about these kinds of matters but they have a significant impact on everyday life and we will have to legislate for them. There are also other complex financial areas, such as the central securities depository for the buying and selling of shares, where we rely on a UK-based system and we will need to legislate to facilitate them in the future.

I could go on because there are many other areas but we will have an opportunity to debate them with detailed explanation. I reassure Senators that there is preparedness for a no-deal Brexit and preparedness for what we call a central case scenario. The latter is still the most likely scenario, where there will be a transition period of somewhere between two and four years followed by a Brexit which will result in changes that we will all have to learn to live with, legislate for and prepare for. Either way, legislation will be needed. If that legislation must be passed in an emergency way on 29 March, however, we will accelerate our state of preparedness to be as ready as we can be.

No matter how good we are at no-deal contingency planning, however, we will not be able to create a situation where the status quo persists through a no-deal Brexit. It will be an extremely demanding time for Ireland - for many across our economy, for many vulnerable sectors that rely on seamless trade between the UK and Ireland and for the fragile peace process, North and South, in the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, which is unlikely to be back up and running by 29 March. I hope I am wrong in that regard, and we will work to change the current political impasse in Northern Ireland.

I will finish with one other aspect of the Border issue because it has been raised by a number of Senators. I have missed a number of other matters and I am happy to return to them if Senators wish to discuss them with me afterwards. To give clarity on the Border issue, the Government is not preparing in our contingency planning for physical border infrastructure between the two jurisdictions on this island, and we will not start doing so either. We have a deal that took two years to put in place, that addresses all the complexity of both the politics of the issue and the legal, regulatory issues thereof, and that has found a way to prevent in a worst-case scenario the requirement for physical border infrastructure by creating regulatory alignment and putting a customs arrangement in place. That deal was done and signed up to by the British Government, EU institutions and EU governments. To Theresa May's credit, she insisted on doing that despite pressure not to do it, and continues to defend the need for a backstop, in spite of many others making a political football out of the issue and describing it as something it is not, namely, a threat to the constitutional integrity of Northern Ireland, although, unfortunately, that has become the narrative around the backstop.

I have also noted that the absence of a backstop and a deal creates a complex and challenging situation for the Government to work with the British Government and the EU institutions to find a way of avoiding the need for physical border infrastructure on the island of Ireland. The idea that we would throw away a solution which took two years to put together and to which everyone has signed up, because it has become something in Westminster that it is in fact not, is very frustrating. The focus should be on asking those who advocate doing away with the backstop to answer the question of how they would solve the issue because they also advocate for no border infrastructure. They make the simplistic argument that because they, the Irish Government, the UK Government and the EU do not want it, there is nothing to worry about. As Theresa May, the Taoiseach and I have said many times, the issue cannot be wished away. Rather, a legal, regulatory mechanism that is agreed by all sides is needed to reassure people that we do not face border infrastructure in the future as an unintended consequence of Brexit, given our obligations as an EU member state to protect the integrity of the EU Single Market and customs union of which we are a part and because of which we thrive.

Deal or no deal, we will insist on finding ways to avoid border infrastructure on this island, but that job will become highly complex and difficult if we do away with an agreed mechanism to solve the problem and create the time and space for a future relationship agreement which, I hope, can be so close and comprehensive that the backstop will never be required to be used. Let me be clear: we continue to defend the withdrawal agreement in full, including the backstop, because nobody has alternative solutions to the problem in London, Dublin or the EU. The only solution is through regulatory alignment, and those who talk about technology on the physical border itself do not understand the problem or the need for a level playing field to protect an all-island economy, whether for farmers, fishermen or those manufacturing a product North or South of the Border.

I look forward to returning to the House. I hope I will not have to return with the legislation but if I do, I look forward to Senators' co-operation and talking to party leaders in preparation for that to ensure all the information is available in order that nobody will be asked to rush matters and that, if necessary, we can pass emergency legislation for the sake of the country in a timely and efficient manner.