I note the comments of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Leo Varadkar, in County Donegal at the weekend that there should be no economic border between the North and the South. He also said we should advocate that the North should stay in the customs union and the Single Market and that any customs checks should be at ports and airports, not at land borders. He added that most people in the North had voted to Remain, as had most Members of the new Legislative Assembly, MLAs. At the risk of undermining the Minister's chance of becoming leader of Fine Gael whenever the Taoiseach finally brings his long last lonesome goodbye to a conclusion, I welcome these remarks.

When is the Deputy going to join me?

That will be even longer.

Not for a while. I look to the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney, to outline his position on this issue.

For over four months, the Taoiseach has denied there will be customs checks along the Border. In fact, he denied that the Government was looking for locations for such checks even though that was patently untrue and was verified by the Minister for Finance who confirmed that Revenue was looking for such locations. The position of the Taoiseach was also contradicted by Michel Barnier in his address to the Oireachtas last week, when he said, "Customs controls are part of the EU border management. They protect the Single Market. They protect our food safety and our standards".

The economic implications of customs checks for the two economies on this island, especially Border communities, are enormous. Currently, island-wide trade generates over €3 billion annually. Around 60% of exports in the North are to the Irish State. Over 30,000 people travel across the Border every day for work, study and recreation. Everybody knows that if Brexit leads to tariffs and customs checks the effect will be devastating, in particular beyond the Pale in rural Ireland. Jim Woulf, chief executive of Dairygold, said, "You'll have decimation in rural Ireland with the beef, and the dairy and the mushrooms, you have the drink industry".

The Taoiseach is bound to know this. Why continue with the fiction that there will be no customs checks? As far as I can establish, this is based on the wholly meaningless statement from the British Primer Minister that there will be no return to the borders of the past. As I said, Mr. Barnier said customs controls are part of EU border management, which the Taoiseach now knows.

Clearly, negotiations are going on as we speak before their adoption at the General Affairs Council on 22 May. There is time to press for the EU to take on board the proposition for designated special status for the North within the European Union. Would it not be better to do that instead of pedalling the pretence that there will be no customs checks when the Government is looking for such locations?

Maybe Deputy Adams and I could form an unprecedented unique partnership when he leaves. He might advise me.

In respect of the Single Market, Mr. Barnier spoke here last week and outlined his views on the outcome of the European Council, the paper from the European Commission and the recommendations from the European Parliament. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland want access to the Single Market, and the Republic of Ireland is in the Single Market and will remain so.

As we are speaking today, we do not what know the outcome of the trading negotiations that will apply will be. If, for instance, there are no tariffs between Ireland and Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic or the UK and the European Union, there are still two different jurisdictions and some arrangement to deal with that will have to be made. The point of agreement by the British Government is that there will not be a return to customs posts as we all knew them many years ago along the Border. The agreement politically is that whatever the outcome on the trading relationship, a different way of dealing with this would have to be found.

It is not impossible to have a situation like that to which Deputy Adams referred. The phrases "unique circumstance", "particular and specific circumstances" and "special cases" have been repeated in respect of Northern Ireland. That is why we have the peace process, peace funds and agreement on a range of areas about what should happen with Northern Ireland.

We do not yet have a Northern Executive, and I hope that after the British general election the parties will sit down and put an Executive together before the end of June. That will not sort out this problem, but at least we might have common ground that Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Executive and the parties do not want a return to the border of the past with hard customs posts. Nor does the Republic, and we are not going to have that.

However, we do not know the answer to the question of whether there will be tariffs and, if so, to what extent. Even if there are no tariffs, there will still be two jurisdictions, namely, the European Union and the United Kingdom. As the Deputy is well aware, the Six Counties belong to the United Kingdom and will remain so under the Good Friday Agreement until the people decide by their vote, consent and democratic means to change it. If it becomes a reality, it will be accepted by both Governments and recognised by the European Union. Until such time as the divorce proceedings deal with borders, modalities, potential liabilities, citizens' rights and reciprocal rights, we will not get into the detail and complexity of what will arise.

In fact, the Six Counties do not belong to the United Kingdom under the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement removed that claim. It is a temporary little device until the people decide they want a united Ireland.

It is not a temporary device but the constitutional position.

The Taoiseach says we will not have a hard border, but he does not tell us how he will prevent it from coming about. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Leo Varadkar, has rightly pointed out that there should be no economic border at all between the North and the South. Can the Taoiseach not say that? The Minister said we should advocate for the North to stay in the customs union and the Single Market and that any customs checks should be at ports and airports, not at land borders. He pointed out that most people in the North had voted to remain, as did most of the MLAs elected to the new Assembly. Can the Taoiseach not say that? He knows that Sinn Féin's resolve is to get the institutions back in place as quickly and as soon as possible. If the Border becomes a land border between the European Union and the non-European Union, there will be tariffs and customs checks along the Border and divisions on the island will deepen. However, the Taoiseach has yet to say this should not happen and point out why. He has yet to make it a negotiating priority. I invite him to do so now. Having heard the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar's position, does he happen to know what the position of the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney, is?

I happen to know what the position is. An agreement has been reached with the European Council that Ireland will be recognised as having particular and unique circumstances which apply to it. The European Council has also recognised that it has no intention of returning to a hard border. Deputy Gerry Adams says there will be no tariffs, but he is not in a position to do so, given that negotiations on the issue have not yet commenced. I am telling the Deputy that even if there were no tariffs, we would still have two jurisdictions, namely, the European Union and the United Kingdom. There might be customs checks at Pembroke or Holyhead. If one looks at eastern European countries where border checks applied in the recent past, there were eight and ten hour delays. That is not what we want as it leads to inefficiencies, inordinate delays, paperwork, jobs issues and all the rest. We do not want that. We have a situation where freight and machinery can move throughout Europe on the basis of the invoices alone. That is the Single Market.

The British Government is stating it wants to have as close as possible a relationship with the European Union, albeit that is what we now have. The British Government made the decision that it wanted out of the Single Market and a changed status in respect of a customs union. These are matters which have not even been talked about in the detail that will lead to negotiations. The first issue to be addressed, as Mr. Barnier pointed out here, consists of liabilities and modalities, what that means and whether there is a figure. The second issue is citizens' rights and reciprocal rights, while the third is the Border. We have all of these things while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland want to be part of the Single Market. However, there is an aggregate vote, as a result of which the United Kingdom decided to leave and which is causing all kinds of trouble. In the next two and a half to three years an inordinate amount of political time will be taken up in dealing with something we did not wish for in the first place. However, we have to respect it and deal with the consequences.