 I was going to say it's a great pleasure to welcome Lord Hani here at this uncertain times. I think that the last three years have been unsettled, worrisome. I think particularly worrisome about the Dublin-Belfast relationship, particularly the relationship with the Unionists and the Dublin-London relationship as we appear to be on different sides of the fence. I'm looking forward very much to hear David give us some indication, if he can, of where he thinks things might end up in the in the coming in the coming future and in particular if he might be able to address in some way where he sees the future of this terribly important relationship between London and Dublin. David, you're welcome. The Eurosceptics always say they are. Yes, well, thank you very much, David, for that introduction. And it is actually some years since I last had the pleasure of addressing this august body. But at that time, and I can't quite remember but somebody will know that here will remember when I last did so. It was a period when Brexit was no more than a dark, heavy, thunder cloud on the horizon. But I was sufficiently perceptive to warn that it needed to be taken seriously and that it was fraught with unintended consequences. And I take no pleasure in that degree of foresight. Now, the last four years have been pretty daunting and unpleasant ones. I would call them a nightmare for someone like me who believes that Britain's place is in the European Union, as John Major put it at the heart of the European Union. And the first thing I think that any Britain standing on this platform in Dublin needs to do is to apologize to all of you for those damaging years, for having what I would describe as dragged you into what we are rather unwilling in Britain to recognize is just as much a nightmare for you as it is for us. Now, when I agreed last summer to come here on the 14th of October and to try to answer this question, are we now in the Brexit end game? I was, of course, unaware that this would be the day of the Queen's speech, opening a new session of parliament. That has certainly not made my task any easier and I will not comment directly on the contents of that speech. Made only an hour or two ago, I did actually manage to watch it before I came along here, but I shall not comment on that. But I would merely say that I think quite a lot is going to happen during the four or five parliamentary days of the debate on the address which will now take place and which will be heavily concerned with Brexit. Now, governments do sometimes find themselves between a rock and a hard place, although wise governments do their best to avoid that painful predicament. Brexit has seen three successive British governments caught between a series of rocks and hard places, many of which have been of their own construction, and the sequence is not yet over. Here is a sample of some of these occasions of being caught in that way. First was the miscalculation by David Cameron that after a somewhat cursory renegotiation, he could rid his party of its hang-ups over Europe and be victorious in an in-out referendum. And so sure was he of that, of pulling it off, that he made no preparations for failure. Then his successor, Theresa May, without any serious preparation or consultation of her cabinet or of parliament ruled out staying in the single market and the customs union. And that had very serious consequences, particularly consequences on the island of Ireland. She followed that up by triggering a time-limited negotiation without having a proper negotiating strategy and also by accepting the EU's sequencing of negotiations, which made a bad outcome for the UK and one most unlikely to be acceptable to our own supporters in parliament, almost a certainty. And I have to say, because much of what I say today has already been and will be very critical of British governments, that I do not think that the European Union was very wise in insisting on that sequencing with the consequences that it has had. And then she called a general election and lost it in 2017. And instead of drawing the conclusion that cross-party cooperation was essential, she chose to rely instead on the wafer-thin majority provided by the Democratic Unionist Party, which has only, of course, accentuated her negotiating difficulties and those of her successor. Now the Johnson government is trying to find a way through, not so much by changing the music, but by increasing the volume and by recourse to the no deal is better than a bad deal mantra, which so far has frightened a lot more people in the UK than it does in Brussels and rightly so. Well, enough about process. How about the substance? Well, so far as trade within Europe is concerned, most of the solutions put forward by successive British governments will, none of them will preserve the frictionless trade we have now, nor will the UK remain as attractive to inward investment, which has always and will continue to be based on a calculation about access to the wider European market. As to trade between the UK and Ireland and between the two parts of Ireland, once you rule out remaining in a customs union, as the latest proposals, London proposals do, it is WTO rules, not rules laid down in Brussels, not rules laid down in London or in Dublin, which require you to levy tariffs. Neither the UK nor the EU can afford to float the WTO's most favored nation rules when we are both doing our best to resist President Trump's efforts to dismantle that organization. Then there is Britain's trade beyond Europe. The right to negotiate new trade agreements on an independent basis has from the outset been the jewel in the crown of the Eurosceptics, but is it all that it's cracked up to be? I don't think so. For one thing, the EU itself has been busy negotiating far-reaching trade agreements with Japan and most recently with Mercosur to add to its already worldwide network. And there are more to come. Will the UK be better able? Will it be able to compensate for the losses in intra-EU trade that will occur from the loss of frictionless access? The answer to neither of those questions is a positive one. There is, of course, the US on which President Trump continues to wax eloquent, but will a UK-US deal come at an acceptable price? And will Congress endorse it, ratify it as it must, if there are now to be trade barriers on the island of Ireland which are hard to reconcile with the Good Friday Agreement? And then there is internal security, a much overlooked issue. To give her her credit, Mrs May did not ignore it or overlook it. She had, after all, been through the ringer of the Protocol 36 negotiations in 2013-14 when the UK opted, after much travail, to remain in all the EU's main Justice and Home Affairs institutions and instruments. She knew that leaving the European arrest warrant, the criminal record system, the Schengen information systems, the passenger name recognition rules, the membership of Europol and Eurojust would have seriously negative implications for law enforcement in the UK and on, of course, on the island of Ireland where the depoliticisation of law enforcement could be put at risk. The Johnson government seems not to care very much about all this, perhaps because the new foreign secretary campaigned in 2013 to stay outside all Justice and Home Affairs legislation. That is not a view shared then or now by Britain's law enforcement agencies, but it is what would be at risk if we left without a stake, without a deal. That is quite enough now. I think I've talked about the process and the substance and explained to you why we are in such a pretty pass, but now I must try to answer the question on the exam paper. We know where are we now in the Brexit end game and I'm sure you will not be surprised to hear that I am neither able nor foolish enough to give you a clear cut answer. Much will happen, both at Westminster and in Brussels in the next two weeks, which will contribute to shaping that answer. But here are a few pointers. First, I simply do not believe that there is enough time between now and the 31st of October to complete the complex course that would need to be completed if the UK was to leave with a deal on that date. Agreement with the EU 27 on legally complex texts, which quite definitely will not be those recently presented by the British government to the EU. Approval by the European Parliament, approval by the Westminster Parliament, implementing legislation by the latter, Westminster that is to say, to give effect in our domestic law to the provisions in such a deal, which we have to do if we are to ratify the agreement. So if there is going to be a deal this week, there will need, I would suggest, to be at least what is called a technical extension under Article 50. So will we, if there isn't a deal, leave without one on the 31st of October? I doubt that, unless the EU 27 object to a request for more time, because our own law known as the Ben Act is clear that the government has to ask for a act if by the 19th of October it has not got a deal. Will the government find a way around that requirement? Well, they weren't terribly successful the last time they tried to drive a coach and horses to our constitutional conventions. More likely than not, therefore, we will ask for another delay and it will be granted. No doubt the government will blame that on those who put through the Ben Act. They'll blame everyone in sight, Brussels, Parliament, the courts, the lot. I just point out that in the last stages of the Ben Act in the House of Lords, the majorities rose steadily to over 200, rather a large figure. Well, what then? In all probability, I suspect, if there is an extension and there has not been a deal, there would be further efforts made to try to find a deal with no certainty whatsoever of success. At the same time, Westminster will need to face two very crucial choices, whether to have an early general election and whether to have another European referendum, either on the acceptability of a deal if one is struck or on leaving without one, with the option to remain there in either case. My own preference would be to take those decisions in reverse order. That's to say, referendum first election afterwards, because the outcome of an election could very well not, in fact, make resolving the Brexit problems any easier. And so I do think that that would be the best order to take them in. But I have to tell you that I will have no role whatsoever in making that decision, which will be a matter principally for the House of Commons. The alternative scenario is that some sort of a deal will be struck the European Council meeting on Thursday or Friday of this week. The chances that outcome have certainly become greater since the T-shock and the Prime Minister met last week and since the negotiating teams went into what is called a tunnel at the weekend. But the old adage about not counting chickens before they are hatched applies to such speculation. If there is a deal, it will be unlikely to bear much resemblance, even the faintest resemblance, to the proposals put on the table by Boris Johnson nearly two weeks ago. I cannot see either the consent provisions nor those relating to trade across the border in Ireland surviving. It will be more like Mrs May's deal with some tweaks, what has been unkindly described as putting lipstick on a pig. Would such a deal pass the Commons? Far from sure. The DUP and the ERG could find it hard to swallow. And even if it does pass, there is likely to be a major effort to tack on to it the requirement for a confirmatory referendum to be voted on before the UK can ratify it. And that could very well pass since some, if not all those who voted through the Ben Act with a majority of 27 would likely vote for it. And in those circumstances, the referendum question would be clear. That's if there had been a deal, Boris's deal or remain. Now, one conclusion from this analysis is that we will need to draw much more heavily even than before on the patience of our friends around Europe, not least those here in Dublin. No aspect of the last four years has been more painful than the way it has subjected to stress and strain, one of the greatest achievements of recent times, the improvement of Anglo-Irish relations. We really must try to hang on to that through thick and thin. And if we were to decide, if we in Britain were to decide in another referendum to remain in the EU, would that be bad news for the UK or for the EU? I don't think so. When you look at the great political, economic and environmental challenges facing the world today and heaven knows there are plenty of them and they are very, very difficult to handle. There is not, I would suggest, one single one that would not be better resolved, better dealt with if we Europeans work together. That will be harder if Britain is outside the EU, particularly if we have left without a deal and easier if we are inside. So you can live in hope as I do. Thank you very much.