Coveney’s four Brexit ‘demands’

TÁNAISTE Simon Coveney was last night looking for four key details from the UK if the British want to progress to the next phase of Brexit talks.

A source said last night the chance of progressing to a possible deal was ‘50/50’. A spokesman said Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is ‘hopeful’ but the situation remains ‘fluid’.

TÁNAISTE Simon Coveney was last night looking for four key details from the UK government if they want to progress on to the next phase of Brexit talks.

It had been hoped that Leo Varadkar would be in a position this morning to examine the wording of an agreement in relation to the border, which would allow talks to move on.

However, a source said last night the chance of progressing on to a possible deal was ‘50/50’.

Despite this, a Government spokesman said the Taoiseach is ‘hopeful’, but the situation is still ‘fluid’.

Last night, the Government was looking for four key details. The first was in relation to information around the transition period of the UK exiting the EU.

The second was concerned with the rights associated with the Common Travel Area, and what the arrangements would be on this.

The third was that the Government wanted a commitment that would see the Good Friday Agreement protected.

The fourth, and arguably most contentious, was that

‘Still looking for absolute clarity’

the Government is seeking a solid commitment to avoid a hard border – and that rules and regulations of the Single Market and Customs Union can’t diverge.

Officials from the UK and Ireland spent the weekend in intensive talks aimed at finding a written agreement which would pledge that there be no hard border – no matter what deals are negotiated in the next phase of talks.

A special Cabinet meeting is to be held this morning to update ministers ahead of meetings between Theresa May and EU officials.

A source said the Government ‘is still looking for absolute clarity on the need to avoid regulatory divergence’, and officials have been looking for ‘a black and white commitment’ on this.

The Tánaiste said the border has, historically, been a source of division, but now is pulling people together in terms of trade.

Simon Coveney said he was not looking to ask ‘the impossible’ of Mrs May in terms of how a trade arrangement would prevent a hard border, but said: ‘We are looking for clear principles where we can have a credible answer to the question that if Britain leaves the customs union and single market, how do we prevent customs checks? These are reasonable questions.’

He said that today would be ‘undoubtedly a very big day’ in the context of negotiations.

The British prime minister travels to Brussels to meet Michel Barnier and Jean Claude Juncker, and will also meet Donald Tusk.

‘The hope is that those meetings will result in a momenmake tum that [carries] into the leaders summit ten days later, and can allow the negotiation process to open up to phase two about future relationships and trade deals.’

Asked whether there will be a text agreed on exactly what kind of written assurance Ireland is looking for to allow talks to move on, he said: ‘Obviously we would like that to be the case but, either way, there is a need for the Cabinet to be updated.

‘There needs to be at least ten days to inform other EU capitals of the details of any such written agreement.’

He said today is important to ensure that the Taoiseach is given the mandate to make decisions he may need to if the text of a potential agreement emerges.

Mr Coveney said Ireland does not want to veto the talks, after Mr Varadkar warned he was prepared to stand firm over the border.

Mr Coveney told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show yesterday the country wants a solution on the border that ‘involves all of the United Kingdom acting as one’.

Asked whether Ireland is prepared to use the veto, he said: ‘We certainly don’t want to be vetoing anything. The Irish Government, just like the British government, wants to be able to move the process on to phase two...’

THE significance of today’s crunch talks between Theresa May and the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to this country’s future cannot be overstated.

If the British prime minister fails to come up with an answer to the conundrum posed by a post-Brexit border that is acceptable to our Government, the talks cannot continue to the next phase of trade relations. The Taoiseach seems optimistic that he won’t have to exercise his veto and that a solution can be found to satisfy our national interest. Let’s hope the meeting today confirms his optimism and we can put to rest the fears about a hard border as well as the simmering anti-Irish feeling that has been evident in certain quarters over recent weeks.

It’s two decades since the Belfast agreement sowed the seeds of harmony between Britain and Ireland, culminating in Queen Elizabeth’s historical visit to this country and chartered a new era of peace and prosperity for the North.

Yet dismissive pronouncements by unionist figures were an alarming reminder of unionist intransigence and of the narrow minded superiority that characterised the Troubles era and the hammering out of the hard won peace agreement.

The DUP MP Ian Paisley Jnr called for the British government to ‘shake Dublin’s cage’ and threatened that Westminster could make a deal on fisheries ‘extremely long, tedious and hard for them’, while John Taylor, formerly of the UUP, called the Taoiseach ‘the Indian’.

Bertie Ahern’s scathing assessment of Mrs May as ‘out of her depth’ and foreign secretary Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers as ‘headbangers’ hardly soothed diplomatic nerves either.

It would be a tragedy if politicians trading insults becomes once again a feature of our discourse and the collateral damage of Brexit involves poisoning relations between Britain and Ireland.

We have more to lose from Brexit than the other EU countries. A positive outcome to today’s meeting would limit the damage and stabilise relations between our two countries.