Leo fears ‘a border by stealth’
THE Taoiseach warned yesterday of a border developing ‘by stealth’ on the island of Ireland.
‘I don’t think the risk is a border appearing overnight,’ said Leo Varadkar. ‘I think it is of a creeping border, bit by bit.’
Mr Varadkar said that neither he nor British prime minister Theresa May wanted to be the leaders who ‘unravelled all the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years’.
He also sounded a note of hope, saying that Britain could produce as early as today a new text on the border.
THE Taoiseach warned of a hard border developing ‘by stealth’ yesterday as he welcomed the Dutch Prime Minister to Dublin.
Acknowledging that neither he nor British Prime Minister Theresa May wanted the ‘slow unwinding’ of the progress of the peace process of the past two decades, Leo Varadkar said he feared a hard border appearing due to regulations in adjacent jurisdictions moving out of step over time.
However, Mr Varadkar also sounded a note of hope, pointing out that Britain could produce as early as today a new text on the border aimed at breaking the impasse on progress to secondstage Brexit talks after Christmas.
Addressing fears of a hard border on the island of Ireland, Mr Varadkar said: ‘I don’t think the risk is a border appearing overnight. I think it is of a creeping border, bit by bit.’ He was speaking alongside Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, at Government Buildings.
He warned of ‘a border by stealth developing’ and ‘the slow unwinding of what we have now’, added that neither he nor Mrs May wanted to be the taoiseach and prime minister who ‘unravelled all the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years.’
In relation to the deal on Brexit which fell apart at the last minute on Monday, Mr Varadkar said that Mrs May had conveyed in a phone call that the new working document could emerge overnight.
However, he warned that any room for manoeuvre was small and Ireland retained its red-line issues. ‘We need firm commitments from the UK. She wants to come back to us with some text tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We will look at any text with an open mind.’
Mr Varadkar however failed to agree with Arlene Foster’s account of the events just prior to the deal failing on Monday. Her party the DUP had claimed that the Irish Government had blocked Britain from supplying the text of the proposed wording to the DUP in good time.
He disagreed with that version of events, adding: ‘Nor would I think the British government would obey such an instruction from the Irish Government.’
He said he wanted to be diplomatic in relation to David Davis’s admission in Westminster yesterday that Britain had carried out no impact assessment of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy, before later referencing the 141 affected areas Ireland had identified in cross-border interactions.
‘The harder the border will be, the worse the impact will be on the Irish economy,’ he said.
Dutch PM Mr Rutte said: ‘There will be an important effect on European economies, but it will be infinitely bigger on the UK itself, inflicting a lot of misery.’
Mr Rutte pledged full support for the Irish position, saying resolving the Irish border issue was ‘essential’ if the talks were to progress to the next stage.
The Taoiseach and Prime Minister May spoke by telephone yesterday and took stock of developments. Mr Varadkar’s spokesman said: ‘The Taoiseach reiterated the firm Irish position regarding the text, as outlined by him on Monday. They agreed to speak again over the coming days.’
A No.10 spokeswoman said Mrs May and the Taoiseach agreed ‘about the paramount importance of no hard border or physical infrastructure at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.’
The PM said Britain was ‘working hard to find a specific solution to the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland that respects the integrity of the UK, the European Union and the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.’
Her country was also committed to ‘moving together to achieve a positive result on this’.
‘We will look at it with an open mind’ ‘Reiterated firm position’