BREXIT secretary David Davis has insisted Northern Ireland will be "front and centre" during talks with the EU, amid warnings over the lack of a Stormont executive.
Replying to concerns raised by SDLP MP Alasdair McDonnell, Mr Davis told MPs on Tuesday that the British government had "guaranteed that we will retain the CTA, the common travel area (between the UK and the Republic)".
"In terms of continuing representation, although there is no executive, individual ministers do stay in place - as is normal with governments during election times - and I wrote to the executive a week or so ago, asking them to send a representative to each of the joint ministerial committee meetings," he said.
"They have done so and they have made serious and significant contributions to those meetings.
"We are taking very seriously the analysis they provided of industries in Northern Ireland and very special issues, like the single Irish energy market, are the sort of issues we've got front and centre in the list of negotiating points to deal with."
Mr Davis was speaking after Sinn Féin's new northern leader, Michelle O'Neill, said Brexit would mean a hard border and called for the north to be given special status with the EU.
"What we are very sure of is the implications of a hard Brexit are going to mean a hard border - a soft border is a nonsense," she said.
"So the implications are severe."
Republicans have pointed to the example of Greenland, which secured a special deal covering fisheries after it left the European Community in 1985.
Ms O'Neill told a Sinn Féin event at Belfast's Waterfront Hall on Tuesday: "We are not looking to recreate the wheel.
"This is something that has been done elsewhere.
"Other states have had opportunity to have special designated status. We are asking for the same."
Ms O'Neill said most people in Northern Ireland had voted Remain in the June referendum.
Parodying the Prime Minister's language, she added: "Remain should mean Remain."
However, Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson dismissed Ms O'Neill's comments.
"Sinn Féin says it supports special status for Northern Ireland," he said.
"I find this hard to believe, given that it cannot even recognise Northern Ireland as a legitimate entity and integral part of the United Kingdom. Its MEPs cannot even bring themselves to say Northern Ireland."
He said unlike Scotland and Wales the north's executive, led by the DUP and Sinn Féin, never presented any Brexit proposals to the British government.
"Since the referendum result in June I have been making the case that Northern Ireland's voice must be heard, and that if the Government does not get the Brexit negotiations right, Northern Ireland will have the most to lose," he said.
DUP MP Nigel Dodds said that calls for the north to have a special status within the EU were merely an attempt to ignore the referendum result.
"The UK entered the European Union together as a nation, we voted in the referendum as a nation and we must respect that result and leave the EU as a nation," he said.
"It is impossible to get away from the fact, admitted during the Assembly debate on this issue, that nationalists see special status as an opportunity (to) separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom with a border in the Irish Sea.
"The Prime Minister has moved to bring clarity and certainty to the process of leaving the European Union. There is no such detail for those who throw out vague aspirations of special status. All we are left with from Sinn Féin are recycled ideas from the SNP."
