Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman for the allocation of time to discuss this very important motion. As Senator O'Reilly said earlier, but for Covid this issue would be the biggest issue for us to debate. It is essential that Brexit remains to the fore and that is why we have brought it forward, as a group, here this evening.

The cross-party support for the motion is welcome.We should also be heartened by the level of support we have received from our European partners and this has been referred to by a number of speakers. The President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, very specifically mentioned solidarity with Ireland in her state of the union address. We could not have wished for a better friend than Michel Barnier during the negotiations. Guy Verhofstadt has made clear that the European Parliament will not ratify a trade deal that breaches international law and fails to recognise and honour the Good Friday Agreement. People have made reference to the fact that in the United States, Republicans and Democrats have come behind this and said that if there is an effort to undermine the Good Friday Agreement, which is also seen as partially a success of US support, it will not be supported in the United States. It is appropriate that the Minister of State thanks the officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including the Minister, Deputy Coveney. Over the years, the officials have used Ireland's soft power and diplomacy. People criticise the St. Patrick's Day trips but this shows Ireland's soft power in the circumstances.

Mention has been made of the late John Hume and we have also had his vision throughout. He saw the importance of Europe and the United States to Ireland and how we should be able to look at solving the problem in the relationships on these islands in a global context. He was the one who recognised the importance of Ireland's place on the international stage in trying to address many of these problems.

Senators Norris and Joe O'Reilly recommended that we send the transcript from this debate to the House of Commons and interested parties. I also encourage that we might consider sending it to the likes of the Daily Mailand the Daily Expressbecause these are publications that have become so inaccurate in their coverage of Irish and European affairs that they have almost become parodies of themselves. The message needs to go from the House that there is unity on Ireland's membership of the EU and how annoyed we are about the British Government breaking international law. The poor quality of journalism by these rags needs to be placed in contrast with what has been the mostly excellent journalism on the part of Irish journalists covering European affairs. I am thinking of the likes of John Downing, Pat Leahy and the irrepressible Tony Connelly. We are very fortunate that we have balanced and excellent coverage here. The debate in the UK has been poisoned by the poor quality of journalism and the polarisation that is evident in the media.

A number of colleagues, particularly Senator Wall with regard to the Defence Forces, have already raised some of the issues I wanted to speak about. I would like to deal with the fallout from Brexit in some specific and limited ways. I want to make particular reference to the fact that if we are dealing with a hard Brexit and the landbridge is no longer an option and, believe me, if the type of queues of trucks and other haulage vehicles that we are speaking about come about then the landbridge will not be an option, we really have to prioritise getting more direct shipping routes from Ireland to continental Europe. In this regard, the case of the capacity we need to build at Rosslare, our nearest point now to the rest of the European Union, cannot be underestimated. I would like to hear in his response some indications from the Minister of State as to how we will specifically do this with our ports and particularly Rosslare.

As Senator Martin said, we must look at the challenges we face but we must also look at the positive things we can do to deal with this. We have to look at how we can further build relationships on these islands, particularly between young people. I ask the Minister of State to consider re-establishing the Causeway exchange programme, which was a North-South, east-west exchange programme involving young people. Particularly if the UK pulls out of Erasmus, we need to look at ways for student exchange. I concur with the language strategy need for higher education links. However, in the context of the UK being out of Europe, we now need a bigger debate around Ireland's future relationship, with that being at the heart of Europe. This was very much shown in the vision of Seán Lemass when he talked about Ireland going into the Community, as it was then, and being central to the decision-making processes and helping shape the future of the Continent. It was shown when Jack Lynch and Patrick Hillery signed the accession document to bring us in.

I am very proud of the fact that my party, the Minister of State's party, and others have always favoured closer co-operation in Europe. We have had a consistent position of supporting all of this island having membership of the European Union. We believe that continues to be very important. In that debate about Europe, we need to talk about putting forward republican values, Irish values, and values around free and fair trade, around human rights and democracy, something which are not being respected by the UK Government but which are, however, core Irish and European principles, and around solidarity and co-operation. In this motion, we must look not only at the immediate impact of what is happening to our trade and to our Border communities, as has been so eloquently expressed by colleagues, but also at the whole of this island and our future relationship in a post-Brexit Europe.

Again, I thank the Minister, Deputy Coveney, which I am sure the Minister of State will relay to him. He has been performing particularly excellently in his handling of this. When he appeared on "The Andrew Marr Show" on BBC, people thought that when he spoke, he spoke for the whole island. We know that solidarity is felt right across the European Union. We need to come out of this House, and indeed these Houses, tonight to show there is cross-party solidarity, that Ireland and Europe stand united, and that we do not accept a breach of international law.