Brexit makes me feel like Rip Van Winkle, Bertie tells Commons

BERTIE Ahern has said Brexit makes him feel like Rip Van Winkle ‘who fell asleep for 20 years and woke up to find out that everything had changed’.

The former taoiseach made the comments before a House of Commons committee yesterday, which he attended to discuss his views on Brexit as one of the authors of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Ahern, pictured, took issue with recent unionist assertions that the North must not be treated any differently from the rest of the UK, a position he says is a direct contradiction of the 1998 peace deal.

‘I wondered had I turned into Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep for 20 years and woke up to find out that everything had changed,’ he said of such claims.

Mr Ahern insisted the Irish Government and the EU would not agree to any proposals for the backstop to be time-limited or replaced with technological solutions, as is being sought by Theresa May.