Small Irish firms ‘could be hit’ by hard Brexit
NORTHERN Ireland Secretaries of State must spend more time here in order to build relationships and find out what is happening on the ground, a key report has recommended.
It recognised that parliamentary arithmetic and the risk of the Government being “ambushed” made that difficult.
But it added: “Karen Bradley was questioned on this at one of her regular sessions with the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in March 2019.
“She said she was trying to spend one working day a week in Belfast. That would be insufficient even if the Executive were up and running — and is even more so in the current circumstances.”
The Institute for Government report Governing Without Ministers warns that the power vacuum here since devolution was suspended risked “stagnation and decay” in public services.
The authors of the think-tank’s 68-page document spoke to a range of civil servants during their research.
The report states: “There are still important decisions that civil servants do not feel can be made in the absence of political cover.
“A prime example is the merging of NI hospital emergency departments, where performance has always been worse than their English comparator, but has been in further decline since 2017.”
The authors advise Prime Ministers to “consider carefully who they make their NI Secretary”.
They add: “It should be regarded as a role for a relatively senior Secretary of State who is able to command respect across the political and civil society spectrum in Northern Ireland.”
The report claims the current Secretary of State lacks “clout” when raising Brexit issues with colleagues.
Julian Smith doesn’t sit on a key committee advising the Prime Minister about Brexit strategy. It also states: “The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) lacks the clout within Government to ensure that Northern Ireland issues were given the priority they perhaps deserved.”
It claims the Tories’ confidence-and-supply arrangement A HARD Brexit could lead to cross-border shopping sprees that could damage many small Irish businesses along the frontier, the Republic’s Finance Minister has been warned.
The Oireachtas Budgetary Oversight Committee has advised Paschal Donohoe that in a no-deal scenario there should be “broad alignment between tax regimes” in the Republic and Northern Ireland to limit the movement of people across jurisdictions to buy cheaper consumer goods.
“Failure to do so may lead to revenue leakage and erode the competitiveness of small businesses in the border area, an area that is already susceptible to the shock of a hard Brexit,” the committee has warned in its final pre-Budget report.
Fianna Fail TD Declan Breathnach, who is based near the border in Louth, expressed particular concern that people would travel to Northern Ireland to buy white goods such as fridges and washing machines at the expense of businesses in the Republic. He said it was a “no-brainer” to have some form of alignment on taxation.
In its report published yesterday, the committee called on Mr Donohoe to be mindful of any “unintended consequences” his Budget decisions may have on the border area. It also calls for a Brexit Stabilisation Fund to support “affected sectors, businesses and communities in all Brexit scenarios” and for more clarity on whether the State’s rainy day fund can be used for Brexit contingency planning.