Neale Richmond (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to pick up on the first point Senator Bacik made regarding to the election happening in Great Britain and Northern Ireland today. The Seanad committee on Brexit will be launching a report on Tuesday next. The committee, on which Senators Craughwell, Marshall and I sit, will be placing a motion before the House and we very much look forward to debating what will be the committee's final report in due course.Rather than seeking a debate on an update on Brexit and relations with the UK next year, as Senator Bacik suggested, I think it is far more urgent than that. I am instead calling on the Leader to see if we can find time next week to debate that. UK politics moves far more swiftly than our politics in terms of the formation of a government. We will have a much clearer idea by Tuesday or Wednesday what the next government in the UK will be. It is crucially important to Ireland, probably more so than with any previous UK election, that we debate that and look at what lies ahead for the next month or beyond for this island. I call on the Leader to see if the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade could facilitate that as early as next week. I will not go into individual candidates or parties, far from it, but the issues at stake that affect this island and this country are so important that we urgently need to have that debate.