Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General – in the Senedd at 2:48 pm on 14 March 2018.
The challenge in relation to what's proposed by the UK Government in relation to Ireland is the difficulty of envisaging the sort of specific solutions that they can in fact bring forward to ensure a soft border while maintaining separate customs and regulatory regimes in Northern Ireland to the EU. From our perspective, the most rational outcome would be for the whole of the UK to remain fully aligned to the single market and remain in a customs union. We're absolutely not convinced that the potential economic benefits of free trade deals would outweigh the economic costs of customs barriers between the UK and the EU. As a Government, we take every opportunity of restating that position to the UK Government.