Leavers who risk Good Friday Agreement are reckless, warns Dublin
Irish leaders hit out at 'irresponsible' claims by three MPS who called for reappraisal of peace deal
BREXITEERS who have suggested the Good Friday Agreement should be reappraised were accused of being “reckless and irresponsible” by Dublin yesterday.
Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland secretary and Leave campaigner, was one of three MPS who questioned whether the 1998 accord had outlived its usefulness.
The Irish border question could cause Brexit negotiations to run aground next month unless the European Commission is prepared to be more flexible in its approach, sources on both sides of the negotiations have warned.
Whitehall sources have admitted the Government still has no answer to how Britain can leave the single market and customs union without imposing a hard border between Ireland and Ulster – which would risk the very foundations of the Good Friday Agreement.
Simon Coveney, Ireland's deputy prime minister, said scrapping the agreement was not the answer.
He said: “Talking down (the) Good Friday Agreement because it raises serious and genuine questions of those pursuing Brexit is not only irresponsible but reckless and potentially undermines the foundations of a fragile peace process in Northern Ireland that should never be taken for granted.”
Mr Paterson, together with the Kate Hoey, the Antrim-born Labour MP, and Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MP, insist that comments they have made in recent days about the need to review the agreement relate to the year-long suspension of power-sharing in Stormont,
‘Talking down the Good Friday Agreement because it raises questions is not only irresponsible but reckless'
and not Brexit.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, said yesterday: “I’m not conscious of anybody talking down the Good Friday Agreement, certainly nobody in the Government has. Everything that we’re doing is aiming towards ensuring we meet every aspect of it. So I don’t foresee that being a problem.”
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, told the Commons there was “no reason whatsoever” why Britain should not be able to exit both the customs union and the single market while maintaining “frictionless” relations between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Sources in London and Brussels have admitted the Brexit negotiations could be “driven to the wall” in March unless the European Commission can show more flexibility in its approach to the Irish border question.
The concern emerged as talks continued in Brussels over how to translate last December’s fudged political deal over the Irish border into a concrete legal text due to be presented to EU member states later this month.
Senior sources said translating the December promise to maintain “full alignment” with the single market if other solutions failed, risked “blowing up” the political situation in London.
Negotiators are seeking to finesse the December deal, which set out three options for the UK to make good on its pledge to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland after Brexit.
The first was through the “overall” EU-UK trade agreement, which is yet to be negotiated; the second was through a combination of “specific solutions” and technical fixes and the third – in the event the first two options failed to satisfy the EU – was that the UK would submit to “full alignment” with the parts of the single market and customs union that underpinned the Good Friday Agreement.
British negotiators say all three options need to be represented equally in the legal text – now due to be published on Feb 28 – in order to avoid reigniting the political rows over the Irish border.
Northern Ireland is once again at the forefront of the Brexit calculations now being made by the Government. Before Christmas it appeared that a definitive position had been adopted. There would be no return to a physical border when the UK leaves the EU and the customs union: Northern Ireland was to remain both an integral part of the UK and of a free-trade area with the Republic.
But since the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will also become the EU’S external frontier with the UK, achieving this benign state of affairs was never going to be easy. The withdrawal agreement contained ambiguous proposals about “regulatory alignment” between North and South, even as the Government insisted the Province would continue to be treated as though it were part of the UK. To do otherwise risked losing the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose votes ensure Theresa May’s majority at Westminster.
Such vagueness could last only so long. The EU wants these commitments written into a legally binding agreement by the end of March if the next stages of these tortuous negotiations are to take place. Some Brexiteers are now questioning whether the stumbling block is the Good Friday Agreement, which brought about a political settlement in the Province in 1998. This has raised the hackles of the Irish, whose foreign minister has denounced such talk as “irresponsible and reckless”. The breakdown in the devolved government at Stormont has complicated matters further, although Mrs May hopes to broker a deal soon.
None of this is necessary. While the Good Friday Agreement has its flaws, it is an international treaty between two sovereign nations, backed by the people in a referendum, and it is here to stay. Warnings that peace on the island is at risk from Brexit are absurd. Everyone wants good relations to continue: after all, most of Ireland’s exports are to the UK, not to continental Europe.
Moreover, neither the British nor the Irish governments want a hard border. If one is put in place, it will be at the behest of Brussels. There is no requirement for physical infrastructure between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the Dublin government needs to resist the obligations being foisted on it unnecessarily by the EU negotiators. Ireland’s interests are not served by making this issue more difficult to resolve than it needs to be.