Brexit: Ireland 'does not want a border down the Irish Sea'

The EU and UK are trying to solve the Brexit Irish border issue

The Irish border is one of the issues still to be resolved ahead of the UK's exit from the EU (AFP/Getty)

The Irish government does not want a border down the Irish Sea separating Great Britain from Northern Ireland, a senior lawmaker from the country’s governing party has said.

Neale Richmond, the Fine Gael senator who chairs the body’s Brexit committee, said Brexiteers had mischaracterised the country’s approach to solving the border question.

His comments come a day after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met with Theresa May at a summit on Sofia, where he warned that there was a “serious” possibility of the UK quitting without a deal.

EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said there would likely be customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland if the so-called “backstop” of keeping NI in the customs union and single market took effect.

But Mr Richmond on Friday morning said the UK should negotiate “the absolute best alignment” with the EU that means there was no border anywhere.

“One thing we’ve been very clear on, we always want it to be an overall EU-UK agreement – we don’t want to see any border on the island of Ireland, something the British government has committed to both in December again and in March – but we always don’t want to see any border in the United Kingdom, we don’t see that a vision, down the Irish Sea, as a lot of Brexiteers are trying to paint our position,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He added: “Nothing’s gone and nothing’s finished at this stage; that’s what we’re hoping for. We have the confirmation from the British government: they have said there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland.”

We’re not going to sacrifice the entire integrity of our single market, of our union, just to satisfy certain opinions in the United Kingdom

Neale Richmond, Fine Gael senator

The senator warned that the EU had to protect the integrity of its single market, stating that “we’re not going to sacrifice the entire integrity of our single market, of our union, just to satisfy certain opinions in the United Kingdom”.

The intervention comes amid a row over how to solve the Irish border question which has all but deadlocked Brexit talks. The UK Cabinet is divided between two options for customs procedures after Brexit, both of which were presented by the government in a paper published in August of last year.

The EU has already said UK plans for a so-called “customs partnership” are based on “magical thinking” and that a separate, vaguer proposal involving technology called MaxFac (“Maximum Facilitation”) would not prevent a hard border in Ireland. The Government is due to choose between the two rejected proposals by next month, four months before the deadline for signing a deal.

Both the UK and EU say they want to avoid the return of a hard border on Ireland, as secured under the Good Friday Agreement.

The two sides in talks also both need to agree how the so-called “backstop” to the Ireland question – which come would into effect if no other solution was found – would work in practice.

Though the backstop was in principle agreed in December, both sides have now begun to interpret the ambiguous text of what they agreed in different ways. Downing Street says the policy would keep the entire UK aligned inside the customs union to prevent a hard border on Ireland, while the EU has said the agreement would keep Northern Ireland in the customs union, and introduce customs checks at Irish sea ports between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The EU is sceptical of Britain's interepretation of keeping the entire UK aligned because Brussels worries it would allow the UK effective access to the single market without having to follow its rules.