Seanad debates

Tuesday, 12 March 2019

Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2019: Second Stage

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Maire DevineMaire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this historic legislation. We are in uncharted waters and Britain has been in uncharted waters since the call for the referendum on Brexit. I will speak from three different perspectives. The areas I will try to cover are health, climate action and social protection and what it will mean for these areas. I want to comment on what Senator Conway-Walsh said about the green card. Last week, Border Communities Against Brexit, a group I am sure the Minister of State knows well, came to Leinster House. They spoke about the difficulties with insurance and the green card. They also spoke about attending a meeting of the farmers' union in Fermanagh 18 months ago, where all but two of the approximately 20 people who attended were determined they would leave. Last week, they met the same group of people and all of them determined that they wished they could stay but sin scéal eile and we have gone beyond that.

We continue to contemplate the prospect of a hard Brexit and we are all watching the news closely. It looks more likely and then abates but then comes back again and there may be no agreement and no transition.Brexit should come with a health warning as it is bad for all of our health and not just that of Britain. Nobody knows how it will look or feel or how it will be on 29 March. All bets are off. We do not know where we are going and Britain certainly does not know.

Any Brexit, especially what is transpiring to be a poorly handled Brexit, will affect basic delivery of health services on this island. There are deep links between this State and the North in delivering cross-Border healthcare. Along the Border there are services for sexual health, diabetes and eating disorders, and GPs along the Border have patients on either side. The integrated services between the North and the Twenty-six Counties are substantial and well-established for cancer, cardiac surgery, diabetes, paediatric care and emergency care. There are 30 service level agreement, numerous memorandums of understanding and numerous partnerships. We do not know what will happen to all of this vital healthcare infrastructure. The legislation seeks to copperfasten these services from the point of view of the State but what guarantees are there that it is a priority for the British Government? There are none so far. The pesky Border was not even given a second thought and from the outset many British politicians in some quarters did not consider or dismissed outright Ireland's concerns. They continue to blame Ireland for daring to voice its opinion on what I would call the act of national self-harm. These are the so-called intelligentsia of the British Conservative Party. I will not comment further. They are not doing the British public any good. They are imposing this national act of self-harm on their people. Brexit will affect every level of our health ecosystem and there are thousands of questions, large and small, that remain unknown and unanswered.

Climate disruption, climate change and climate action do not stop at the Border. Our future energy grid will be powered by a wider variety of energy types to displace fossil fuels. We need to feed into an all-island grid to best maintain and secure supply. Two separate grids make no sense for the energy customer, the supplier, the operator or the generators. Together the two parts of the island have considerable resources and potential to be a world leader in renewable energy. Wind, wave and water resources do not stop at borders and neither should the infrastructure to harness them.

From the perspective of social protection, what will happen to the 132,000 people living here in receipt of a state pension from the UK? What will happen to the 30,000 people in the UK who are in receipt of a pension from Ireland? What will happen to the more than 1,000 child benefit payments from the UK for children residing in Ireland? There is little detail in the Bill regarding overall social protection matters but it was the first concern raised after the Brexit vote. It is a very practical concern. Many of the concerns were addressed by the convention on social security, which was signed recently by the two Governments, and this is very welcome. The responsibility lies with each party to ensure this legally binding agreement is upheld and respected and not diluted, overlooked or ignored in the chaos and distraction of what are perceived as the bigger Brexit issues.

We hear the mantra, "Brexit means Brexit", whatever that catchy phrase means. People have latched onto it believing it is quite profound but we have not figured out what it means. With days to go, we are hitting peak Brexit mayhem. When history looks back, Brexit should be awarded a medal for being the most senseless of decisions.It is a paradox where the British Government has pursued the Brexit policy, one contrary to the people's interests and against the interests of its own country. Sinn Féin has submitted numerous amendments and I look forward to discussing them in this Chamber in the debate in the coming days. Perhaps I am being partisan and republican but I take one positive element out of the situation, that is, that the agenda of a united Ireland is on the table and is being progressed. The same is true of the Scottish independence agenda. The Union is being fragmented, as opposed to being pulled together.

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