No Brexit border? So why is UK recruiting guards?
THE British Home Office is advertising for 21 new Border Force posts in the North – despite claims by Theresa May that she is in favour of a frictionless border.
Only British passport holders can apply for the roles – potentially excluding much of the nationalist population of the North who opt to only hold Irish passports.
Hundreds of other jobs are being advertised for Border Force employees across the UK as Britain moves into its final year in the European Union.
Fianna Fáil spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Niall Collins, said that the ads show that the British government really is moving ahead with plans to establish a visible Irish border post-Brexit and said it was time for the Irish Government to ‘up its game’ in response.
And he added: ‘What troubles me greatly is the move to exclude Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland from applying for these roles. The Good Friday Agreement is explicit on the right of the people of the North to obtain Irish or British citizenship, and indeed both. Discriminating against Irish citizens in the North would fly in the face of both the spirit and letter of the agreement.’
Mr Collins said: ‘This requires the Irish Government to up its game. This is why we wanted all negotiations vis-a-vis the North completed as soon as possible.’
The positions are being advertised with an application deadline of the end of the month. They comprise 16 Border Force officers and five Border Force assistant officers, all to be based in Belfast but with outdoors deployment as required.
Claire Hanna, Brexit spokesman for the SDLP, said it was ‘exclusionary and chilling’ for such vacancies to be advertised and to then discriminate against those who are Irish passport holders.
The British government should ‘spell out clearly what form of border they anticipate these employees to be guarding’, she told the Irish News.
The eligibility criteria for the jobs, with salaries up to £27,000 (€31,000), specify that candidates must hold a full and valid British passport. This is because the jobs are ‘reserved posts’, meaning ‘only UK nationals may be employed’ and ‘under no circumstances may any other nationals be employed in reserved posts’. According to British government civil service rules, posts are reserved in this manner ‘due to the sensitive nature of the work, which requires special allegiance to the Crown’.
Ms Hanna, an SDLP MLA for South Belfast, said: ‘Having failed to put forward any serious ideas for how to address Brexit, it appears that the UK government are now finally doing some planning but for the one outcome they promised to avoid.’
A Home Office spokesman told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘As we prepare to leave the EU, it is vital that we continue to ensure operational resilience at the border. Home Secretary [Amber Rudd] announced last month that Border Force was launching a nationwide recruitment campaign for officers across many of its port and airport locations.
‘This campaign will... support Border Force to respond flexibly to emerging requirements, including any future requirements as a result of EU exit.’
In another worrying development for the Irish Government, applicants are being officially told their duties will include ‘checking all passengers arriving by sea or air for immigration control purposes’. The ‘backstop’ agreement for a frictionless border agreed by the EU and the UK last December includes a promise that there will be no infrastructure, security of physical checks.
‘Must hold British passport’
RIGHT from day one, this newspaper has consistently pointed out that it’s difficult to see how Brexit can be implemented without creating a hard border between this jurisdiction and the Six Counties.
Yet we are still being told that this simply won’t happen. If that really is the case, though, then why are jobs being advertised for Border Force staff in the North?
This development strongly suggests that we were right all along. It also seems to confirm that there is no obvious way of squaring the circle when it comes to this particular situation.