The Taoiseach is in Brussels today for a meeting of the European Council which was being heralded not so long ago as a massively important meeting for Brexit negotiations and the Irish question.

The Tánaiste stated in March that the summit is significant from an Irish perspective and the Taoiseach told us in April that he was optimistic progress could be achieved in June. We are all well aware that has not happened as a consequence of the prevarication of the British Government. There is, quite rightly, huge concern among people and businesses about this matter. There is massive worry right across Ireland, North and South, about the consequences of Brexit and the negative impact it will have on key sectors in the economy. The Tánaiste is well aware of those concerns.

As matters stand, the British position would impose a hard border on our island and would lead to the imposition of barriers in the context of east-west trade. It would also undermine and damage the Good Friday Agreement. Britain's negotiating position is to run down the clock, delay and delay again. Allowing some time for Theresa May to get her house in order might have been sensible for some time but now we are playing right into the hands of the British Government. We are told tomorrow's European Council statement will express concern that no substantial progress has been made on the backstop solution. Such a statement is meaningless if we are to turn a blind eye to the British negotiating side in these talks. Last December, we were informed by Government, with all the attendant fanfare, that we had a cast-iron guarantee. We were told that in the event of a no-deal scenario, there would be no border on the island of Ireland. We were told the backstop arrangement was our insurance policy and that it would come into play in the event of a hard Brexit. We in Sinn Féin supported the Government at the time despite the limitations of what was on offer in December last year. We did so because we want what is best for Ireland's interests. That means there is an onus on the Government to step up to the mark and not allow us to move into October without a resolution to the Irish issues. That means the EU negotiating strategy must be informed by Irish thinking. The Irish perspective needs to be at the centre of the table and needs to move things forward. If that requires a special European Council summit in September to deal with the issues relating to the Irish question, then so be it. We should be making that call because we need to initiate and lead. Will the Taoiseach make that call today and tomorrow? Will he be calling for a special summit in order to ensure that the issues relating to Ireland are dealt with before the October deadline?

I thank all parties in the House for the support they have given the Government. Politics in Ireland is remarkably different from politics in the United Kingdom on the issue of Brexit. The work the Government has been doing on behalf of everybody here has, by and large, been supported very strongly by all parties even though we come from different places on so many different issues. That has been hugely helpful. I hope we can keep that intact over the summer months when Ireland needs to hold its nerve in the negotiations and keep the pressure on to ensure we protect Irish interests and the interests of Irish people on this island. I assure the Deputy that is what we will do. I spend the vast majority of my time thinking about and acting in the context of my responsibilities on Brexit. I spent over an hour and a half this week with Michel Barnier talking through the detail of how we can approach the summer with a view to getting the results we need. I will be in London next Wednesday meeting a series of British Ministers to talk through the concerns and frustrations we have. Later today, I will take a phone call from a senior British Government Minister in that regard. I assure the Deputy it is an absolute priority for the Government. We have been frustrated and disappointed that the British Government has not delivered on the commitments it made to Ireland and the EU in December and March and in Prime Minister May's speeches, primarily the Mansion House speech. Over the summer months, the challenge will be to intensify those efforts to find a way of putting in place a legal text that can be part of a withdrawal treaty that will deliver on the cast-iron political commitments that have been made in writing, not only to Ireland but also to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and many others.

Most people understand why we have not made the kind of progress we would like to have made by now. We are listening to the ongoing political debate at Westminster. The British Government is essentially negotiating with itself. Until that process comes to a conclusion it is difficult to make significant progress on some of the key and difficult political issues in the discussions between the British negotiating team and the EU task force led by Michel Barnier. Our focus will remain on the negotiations and the technical detail that is required in terms of legal language to make sure that we will have a withdrawal agreement we can support. As Michel Barnier has been, let me be very clear: there will be no withdrawal treaty if there is no legally operable text on the so-called Irish backstop. It is a fundamental part of it. The commitments have been made by the British side as well as the EU side that it will be accommodated as part of that treaty. The treaty will not happen if that does not happen. The challenge for me and many others is to work with the British Government as much as we can to try to find a way to achieve that outcome and to show some imagination in terms of how we get there.

The backstop and the form it takes are crucial. To allow those negotiations only to be decided upon at the time when everything else is in the melting pot is the wrong strategy for this country. There are serious dangers in it. The best strategy the Brits could have hoped for is that these issues would have been all dealt with together. I have asked the Tánaiste a very simple question. They have missed the deadline. We expected serious progress. They are now intending to roll this into October. We need to take the initiative and inform European thinking. I am asking the Tánaiste to make it very clear on the Government's behalf that there needs to be another deadline set and another Council summit and that we will not allow this to roll into October.

The Tánaiste mentioned that the British Government is negotiating with itself and that this process needs to conclude. That process may never conclude. That is why we need to put firm deadlines in place. The Minister For Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, stated on radio this morning that contingency plans are made for all scenarios including Britain crashing out of the EU. When will the Government give certainty to people, commuters and businesses about what that means for the Border? We know there were contingency plans previously developed by the Revenue, which looked at checks. The Tánaiste mentioned that if there is regulatory non-alignment there will need to be checks. When can we bring some certainty to businesses that are deeply concerned about the likelihood of no backstop arrangement, which will mean no withdrawal agreement and Britain crashing out of the European Union?

For anyone who has been following the detail of what has been happening, suggesting that this is the best strategy for which the UK could have hoped does not make sense. What we have got is consistently conflicting messages from different British Government Ministers. This has made it very difficult to progress anything, including for Britain. No country needs an agreement before October more than Britain does. Ireland is second in line. The damage to the British economy of a crash-out, no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic. The fallout from that would also be very damaging for Ireland, which is why I do not believe we will have a no-deal Brexit. That is why the focus has to be where it should be which is in the negotiating room in Brussels between senior British negotiators and the Barnier task force to tease through the complexity of the issues they face. The British negotiating team needs direction from its political system to be able to do that. We will hopefully see that after the next important meeting in the UK, which will happen at Chequers on Friday, 6 July.

We have done an enormous amount of work on contingency. We deliberately have not been speaking about it publicly because we do not believe it advances some of the negotiating positions we want to maintain. We certainly do not want to create some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that contingency can solve the issues when it will be the negotiations, and the outcome thereof, that will solve them.