Irish minister’s reassurance meaningless, claims Allister
TUV leader Jim Allister has described an Irish minister’s comments that unionists “should not feel threatened or fear a hidden agenda” from her government over Brexit as “meaningless hyperbole”.
Writing in today’s Belfast Telegraph, Heather Humphreys TD says she understands why unionists “want to ensure that whatever is done to avoid a hard border will not affect the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the UK”.
Ms Humphreys, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, writes: “As a member of the Irish Government, I can honestly say that Unionists should not feel threatened or fear a hidden agenda.
“We have the utmost respect for the cultural identity of each and every citizen on our islands and the constitutional status of that citizenship.
“I can categorically state that we respect the territorial integrity of Northern Ireland and we respect the integrity of Unionists as UK citizens.
“I want to reassure Unionists that our only ambition in the negotiations, through the EU Taskforce, has been to ensure that we can continue to live in harmony and that people can go about their normal lives and business as before.
“Furthermore, Unionists have the assurance of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as a majority so wish.”
But Mr Allister hit out at Ms Humphreys’ comments, saying that “once you have your UK single market broken up, as this exit proposal would do, you’ve everything to fear”.
He said: “The Irish Republic’s ambition is to overplay, exaggerate the whole border issue as they did to try and create the leverage to lever Northern Ireland out of its settled position in the UK, in the UK single market.
“And that’s what they’ve been trying to do from day one, and that’s what, if Mrs May’s plan is approved, they will achieve in doing. So I don’t buy any of the honeyed words from Ms Humphreys — I think they knew what they were doing, and my hope and belief is that they so overplayed their hand that they are the ones that will be sorry in the end.
“If they force a situation where we leave with no deal, leave on World Trade Organisation terms, the Irish Republic is then, as the frontier state of the EU, compelled by EU treaty obligations to provide the border. That’s what the EU treaty requires of a frontier state.
“If we leave with no deal, that obligation will then fall on the Dublin government courtesy of Brussels treaty obligations. The EU treaties say that the frontier state shall provide and maintain the EU border.”
Mr Allister said creating a regulatory border in the Irish Sea was “wholly incompatible with the maintenance of our position in the UK and in defiance of the notion that there should be no change with consent” as specified in the Good Friday Agreement.