Brexit will break up the UK

Prime diff iculty now is that the only land border between EU and Britain is just poor old us

ICOUlDN’T believe it when I woke up the morning after. I had sat up fairly late the night before and realised it was going to be tighter than everyone thought. When the result came through, I just felt sad. I think it creates problems for europe, for Britain and, more importantly, for us. It’s a huge thing for us socially, economically, politically. Sterling has fallen into the ground and God knows where it’s going to end up.

What is certain is that it’s going to remain weak for a considerable amount of time. That affects Irish exports to the UK, it makes them more expensive, and that’s going to affect jobs here.

It’s not going to affect the big companies so much because they’re exporting all over the world.

The big IT and pharmaceutical companies are all global businesses and their markets will largely remain the same.

But the smaller companies and particularly the smaller agricultural companies, will be hammered.

Some 60% of beef, 60%-plus of cheese and 80% of poultry is exported. All those companies will suffer, particularly due to the collapse of sterling.

And then there’s the very real risk that the cost of borrowing will rise. Throw possible tariffs into the mix and it all looks very bleak.

Ireland’s economy has been led out of recession by the multinational and export sectors. Trying to work out now whether the multinational sector will pull back on investment or employing more people here – these are all difficult things we have to look at.

Then there’s the fact that ultimately, down the line, I think Brexit will lead to a break-up of the UK.

The Scottish have already announced they’re going for a referendum. I think by next year they’ll definitely do it.

There will be growing pressure to have a referendum in the North as well and I believe this will happen.

The clause we had in the Good Friday Agreement was that it would be seven years before a vote could take place.

I was always trying to keep away from a vote because I wanted things to settle down. I wanted more Assembly elections to take place and the executive to be functioning better.

They’ve achieved most of those things. And now that it’s 18 years on, I think if there’s a real big push to have a vote in the North, they’ll probably get it. But crucially I don’t think it will pass because I don’t think they’ll have the numbers. But that won’t stop Sinn Féin in particular, and maybe nationalists generally, from pushing for a vote.

The difficulty now is that the only land border between the eU and the UK is poor old us. And that’s going to create three big difficulties. Number one is that immigrants – both eU and non-eU – will now see us as the gateway into the UK.

I heard people over the last few days talking about beefing up security at Dublin airport and Rosslare to prevent this. I think that’s very naive – people can arrive at a number of points around our coastline, and I fear they will.

The second thing is that there’s going to have to be tariff controls at the border and that may well bring back passport control. Thirdly, we are likely to see a return of the old tensions at the border going back to the days when people were smuggling.

Secretary of state for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers has said all along that there’ll be no problems at the border if a Brexit were to happen. She knows damn well there will be. I never thought I would see a border between the north and south of the country again. It’s sad.

The only good thing is that because of the lisbon Treaty, there is a two-year period over which the whole process will happen. It’s not like they’re going to pull the plug overnight. It gives us time to get our plan of action in place.

I think the important thing now for the Government is to get all of the main agencies together here. That includes the Central Bank, the IDA, the National Treasury Management Agency, enterprise Ireland and agricultural representative bodies, etc.

They all need to get together and work out what are the things we need to negotiate to protect ourselves. I heard an economist on the radio this week saying we’d have to get on the phone and start negotiating with Britain. let’s be very clear about this, no Irish government can do this. I learned this over 18 years as labour minister, finance minister and then taoiseach. everything must first go through Brussels. So we have to set out to the eU what policies we need in place to protect us.

THe eU in turn will hopefully take on board these policies and then they can talk to Britain. But it doesn’t happen easily. There now needs to be a concerted campaign by the Taoiseach and his ministers to get our point of view across to Brussels. For this reason, I’m glad the Dáil has been recalled tomorrow. There’s no time to waste. As for our future relations with the UK – if Boris Johnson is elected PM, well I won’t be drinking any champagne or wine or Bass.

I was listening to him carefully during his leave campaign and he certainly wasn’t making much sense to me other than beating the drum about British sovereignty and them standing on their own. The way I look at the world of the future – and it’s not maybe how I would like the world – is that China by 2030 will have about 1.4 billion people. India will have 1.5 billion people. The Americas have about 800,000 million people.

And the idea that europe, which has 742 million people, will break itself up into little bits, with everybody paddling their own canoe? It makes no sense to me. In fact it’s preposterous. How can even relatively large european countries like the UK deal with Asia and the Americas on their own?

The answer is they can’t.