Brexit may do incalculable damage

IT is clear that Brexit risks doing incalculable damage to the country, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin told the Dáil. ‘ Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk, as is social cohesion on both sides of the Border,’ he said. ‘For those of us who have had the opportunity to talk to both sides of the community in Northern Ireland in recent days, it is clear that they feel unrepresented and vulnerable in this entire process. Events are moving quickly.

‘The EU is preparing a new position paper on the Irish Border question. We are told it will be a compromise on the initial paper, but which of our interests are being compromised? The backstop on the Border is now presented as the largest barrier to the UK’s exit deal. The backstop, however, does not represent the sum of all of Ireland’s interests.’

The whole point of seeking a separate Ireland protocol in advance was to shield Ireland’s wider interests, such as east-west trade, from the kind of brinkmanship and 11th hour negotiations we now see occurring, he said.

‘Regardless of the result of the EU-UK negotiations, including the potential for no deal, we need to resolve Ireland’s interests before the pressure comes upon us to compromise further, which could now happen at a special meeting of EU Heads of Government as late as November next.’

Deputy Howlin said there is a need to secure a legally binding agreement on the common travel area.

‘We need to ensure that what we enjoy now will continue to exist and will not be weakened or diluted over time. We are told by all sides that there is a political will to maintain the common travel area, but the Taoiseach knows that only exists by way of a so-called gentleman’s agreement. The political environment created by a hard, messy Brexit would provide little guarantee that Irish passport holders could still work and reside in the UK, use the NHS and avail of all the other benefits they now enjoy. Brexit could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Irish people living in the UK. We need the EU to open up the space for a bilateral British-Irish agreement on this issue, the common travel area, which is in our interests.’