Thousands of Irish jobs at stake as UK takes it to the brink
Government is warned of Brexit ‘devastation’
BRITAIN’S brinkmanship over Brexit threatens hundreds of millions of euros worth of Irish exports, and thousands of jobs, the Government was warned last night.
A briefing by prime minister Theresa May to EU business groups, including Irish employer body Ibec, failed to offer any new specifics on how trade would be protected.
With the majority of British boardrooms now fearing a hard Brexit, there were calls last night for the Government here to help end the sense of drift towards the cliff-edge.
Paul Kelly, director of Food Drink Ireland – a sector within Ibec – said: ‘The worst-case scenario for us is a no-deal Brexit, in which case the World Trade Organisation tariffs will kick in.
‘The export volumes of Irish cheese would see an 89% decrease in volume going into the UK. There will be an 88% decrease for beef, and a 76% decrease for other meats.
‘The tariff increase on cheese will go up 56%, while beef will increase by 54%. He added that the agri-food sector accounts for one in eight jobs here, and that a ‘no-deal scenario is absolutely devastating for Ireland.’
Meanwhile, the Government has been accused of having its head in the sand following EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s admission of contingency planning for a collapse of the talks.
‘We have been calling for serious Deal concerns: Paul Kelly Brexit planning all year,’ said Fianna Fáil Brexit spokesperson, Stephen Donnelly. ‘The response from [our] Government has been that Brexit hasn’t happened yet. Promised sectoral plans haven’t emerged, and customs analysis has been suppressed. New research shows that just one Irish company in 20 affected by Brexit has a plan.
‘That’s a damning indictment of Government inaction.’
The Government is hoping Britain will move closer to Ireland’s position on the free flow of goods across the island.
Under this proposed solution, the UK would be outside the Customs Union but inside a new ‘common customs area’. Britain would then market the deal to its population as an accommodation for Ireland, and necessary for peace in the North – rather than as a surrender to the EU.
The UK could then flip the North-South special deal into an East-West arrangement for ease of trade with the rest of the EU.
Ireland and the rest of the EU are awaiting a basis for moving forward to substantive talks.
Danny McCoy, director general of Ibec, suggested an improving climate from the UK yesterday – after it came under pressure
‘Worst scenario for us is no deal’
from its own commercial interests. He attended a business briefing from the UK government for European captains of industry from France, Germany and other trading partners.
‘[Brexit secretary] David Davis was very keen to stress that what Britain is looking for is a free trade agreement that involves no tariffs, with no new regulatory barriers – in other words regulatory equivalence,’ he said.
He said this was what Ireland is seeking, and that a guarantee there would be no regulatory divergence could provide the evidence of ‘sufficient progress’ needed to move to next-stage talks. ‘It might not be the Customs Union, but something that will have all the hallmarks of the Customs Union,’ he added.
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has dismissed any prospect of the DUP being the deciding factor in relations between Ireland and the UK. ‘I don’t accept that solutions for the permanent new relationship between the UK and Ireland – and the UK and the EU – should be subject to one political party of any hue,’ he said.
DIVORCE is the analogy most often used to describe the state of relations between the UK and the EU since the Brexit vote 17 months ago, but that’s far too simple a simile to cover the turmoil we’re facing as the split looms.
Divorce, after all, is a sadly commonplace situation, but there are templates for resolving disputes over money, property, custody and pensions. And eventually, the EU will finalise its divorce with the UK and both parties will move on. It may be that they’ll never reach an amicable deal and they’ll be at daggers drawn for years but again, that’s divorce for you. Eventually, both parties come to terms with the new arrangement and even if they go on hating each other, at least they never have to meet again. If only it were that easy for us.
Ours is more akin to the set-up between once-friendly neighbours who are now at odds, but who have no choice but to go on living cheek by jowl. We’ve had our ups and downs in the past with the folks next door, there have been times when relations were about as tense and hostile as they could be, but in the last few decades we have been the best of mates.
Our children have come and gone freely between the adjoining houses, staying over for as long as they wished, and we’ve shared and benefited from the trappings of mutual neighbourliness.
And then, for no reason that really makes a lot of sense to us, our neighbours have decided that they’re going to build a great big wall around their property and seal themselves off from the rest of the estate and from all the shops and businesses in there. The other residents in the large, diverse, sprawling and multicultural estate are seethingly angry with our neighbours, but it looks as though they’re prepared to set them adrift rather than cut them any slack over this great big wall. If that’s what they want, the rest of the neighbours reckon, they can just stew behind their big wall and see how they get on trying to buy their groceries and cars and services from strangers in distant estates and faraway addresses.
The problem for us is that we’re the ones living in the gloomy shadow of the neighbours’ great big wall. We’re the ones who’ll suffer most from their withdrawal behind this ominous barrier, when the countless daily interactions between us are suddenly hampered or even severed entirely. We can see they didn’t give us much thought when they embarked on this plan and they’re not unduly bothered by its impact on our lives and on our complicated friendship. They don’t seem to care that there are some, on both sides, who’d be perfectly happy to resume the old hostilities and that hard-won compromises are in grave danger again.
A divorce, by comparison, would be a breeze, and that’s why Europe is prepared to play hardball with Britain over Brexit, if it comes to that. If talks on a deal fall through, then 26 of our neighbours will be quite cool with Britain crashing out of Europe in March of 2019 and the devil take the hindmost. Which is all well and good, unless you happen to be the hindmost. And that’s us.
Whatever happens, over the next 16 months, our fortunes are inextricably bound up with those of our nearest neighbour – always have been, for good or ill, and always will. So, gratifying as Mrs May’s current difficulties might be as she faces into another nightmarish week dodging loose cannons and loose talk, it’s time we got over our anger at the Brits and got on with facing up to what their decision is going to mean for us.
Discord
Satisfying as it might be to hear the neighbours tearing strips off each other, as the Government flounders with each new blow, there’s little to be gained for us in their downfall or humiliation. And while the Taoiseach’s tough talk on Brexit might play well with a domestic constituency – yesterday, for example, he again questioned the rationale of the whole Brexit plan and wondered aloud if they even knew themselves what they hoped to achieve – it’s not going to butter any parsnips or export any tariff-free beef, if the worst comes to pass.
Last month, our EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan, derided the UK’s internal discord and said: ‘Common sense left the building a while ago.’ At a time when British politicians should be focused on delivering a good result in London-Brussels talks, he said, ‘unfortunately the LondonLondon negotiations are still going on’.
The hardliners, he went on, truly believe that if they ‘bully their way to the wire’, the EU’s nerve will crack and they’ll get the deal they want. ‘The Brexiteers are hooked on brinkmanship,’ he said, ‘and have been since the beginning.’
Chaotic as the Brexit plan seems to be, though, it would be a big mistake to imagine that the Brits are bluffing, and if that’s the EU’s game plan in the current negotiations, then they’ve not been stud- ying either the history, or the character, of the British people. We are entitled to hope, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has repeatedly expressed, that Brexit won’t go ahead and that the British will rethink their isolationist agenda as the consequences begin to make themselves felt. If they do, though, it won’t be as a result of being threatened with a hard Brexit – on the contrary, that strategy is only ever going to have the opposite effect. If you want to invoke the spirit of the Blitz and make avid Brexiteers out of the substantial Remain lobby, then warnings and menace and mockery are the very way to go about it.
The concept of Britishness has always been defined by external threats and has always resulted in a national unity in the face of a common foe. We really need to make sure that doesn’t include us.
That does not mean cowering in the face of Britain’s economic strength – instead, it means leveraging our unique and nuanced relationship with our neighbours and demanding that the other 26 member states respect our singular exposure on Brexit to bring about the bestpossible outcome for this country.
We are a committed part of the EU and any talk of an Irexit has long since been silenced, but that doesn’t mean we can’t prioritise our own interests in this uncharted territory. If the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal, we will suffer disproportionately.
And while we may like to comfort ourselves with the thought that Europe will come charging to our aid, we need only look to the way they hung us out to dry less than a decade ago at the behest of German bankers to get our answer to that one. Anyone who thinks the Brits are bluffing, and that they’ll pull back from the brink of a ‘no deal’ departure, hasn’t been paying attention.
A hard Brexit will mean a hard border, crippling tariffs on our exports and physical barriers returning to this island. It will mean unpredictability and instability stifling economic growth and national progress. It is the worst possible prospect and it needs to be avoided at all costs. Deriding and mocking the Brits’ difficulties will only bring it closer.
We need to get over our anger at our neighbours, justified as it is, and move on to dealing with the consequences. They may be isolating themselves off and building a wall, but they are not going anywhere. When all this resolves itself, as it eventually will, they’ll still be our neighbours, and still potentially our biggest trading partner and closest allies.
Many have said that Brexit involves a bunch of Little Englanders cutting off their noses to spite their faces. The irony, though, is that if we continue with our current attitude of tough talk and derision, rather than constructive acceptance, we will be doing the same.