Hello and welcome to Brexit Republic, RTE's podcast on Brexit.

I'm Colum Ongown, RTE's Deputy Foreign Editor in Dublin.

And I'm Sean Wheelan, RTE's correspondent in London.

Each week, Brexit Republic brings you the latest from Dublin, London and Brussels.

We're focusing on the UK this week, of course, because there's less than a week to go until polling day.

And less than a week for Boris Johnson to reverse the Bojo No Show jibes from the BBC's Andrew Neal, whose show he's blanking, apparently to avoid a one-on-one grilling.

But he will face off against Jeremy Corbin tonight in the last head-to-head debate with the Labour leader.

We'll have to inflict some serious damage if he's to close the gap in the polls between his party and the Conservatives.

But first this morning, for anyone listening on a Friday, Sean, shortly before we spoke

in preparation for this podcast and I went off to attend a meeting, a PDF dropped into

your inbox. What's in it? What's it called and what's its significance?

Well, the PDF is courtesy of the Labour Party who got hold of it, but actually it's a Treasury

internal briefing document on the Northern Ireland Protocol, marked official sensitive,

so we're probably not supposed to have a look at this, but nevertheless we love things that are

marked official and sensitive, don't we?

Absolutely, we'll spend a bit more time on it as a result. Indeed. but nevertheless we love things that are marked official and sensitive, don't we? Absolutely.

We'll spend a bit more time on it as a result.

Indeed.

It's a set of slides drawn up presumably by Treasury officials talking about the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol and the withdrawal agreement bill and what it might actually mean on a practical basis for the implementation of all things Treasury,

which is in this context customs regulations principally and also compliance with international law around that.

So it's been looking at this commitment in Article 6 of that protocol.

Nothing in the protocol shall prevent the United Kingdom

...