EU and British negotiators need to lock themselves in a room in Brussels for 10 days to hammer out a legal text on the "backstop" to avoid a hard Irish Border after Brexit, Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs spoke at a conference in Cork about negotiations entering a critical phase over the next 10 days on a text on the backstop was required for the next EU summit on October 18th.
“The negotiating teams need to go into a room and lock the door for the next 10 days and we need to find a way forward on text, legal text, that both sides can then support,” Mr Coveney told reporters.
The EU and UK are deadlocked on agreeing a legal text to be followed to implement the backstop. This is the insurance policy that would be triggered should both sides fail to find a better solution to maintain an invisible border on the island of Ireland in a future trade agreement after the UK quits the EU in March.
Both sides have agreed that the withdrawal treaty covering the UK’s departure from the EU must include a backstop to ensure that no hard infrastructure will re-emerge along the Irish Border.
Brussels has proposed a backstop that would keep Northern Ireland under EU economic rules and aligned with regulations covering businesses in the Republic of Ireland in the event of no other option.
London has objected to this idea, which British prime minister Theresa May has argued would separate Northern Ireland constitutionally and economically from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Mr Coveney said he has yet to see the detail of a UK backstop proposal being worked on that would involve a hybrid economic model for Northern Ireland post-Brexit involving some checks between Britain and Northern Ireland. It was “hard to know” whether the proposal would work, he said.
“We have simply heard concepts from the UK so what’s required is an intensification of the negotiations in Brussels,” the Tánaiste told reporters.
He said he hoped a deal could be reached on the backstop over the next couple of weeks so EU leaders can sign off on a withdrawal deal as early as the the October 18th summit.
“We owe it to businesses and many other people who are trying to plan for the future,” he said.
Mr Coveney was speaking before a “Getting Ireland Brexit Ready” conference — dubbed “Brexpo” by the Tánaiste — attended by hundreds of businesspeople to hear from the State’s economic and other agencies about how they need to prepare for Brexit.
The Tánaiste told attendees during an interview that he thought no deal was “very unlikely” because he did not believe there was a majority in the UK parliament “to support Britain crashing out without any deal.”
The likely scenario was that there would be a political agreement reached between the EU and UK teams but that it would be “hard won” and there would be “a bumpy few weeks” ahead.
“I believe that politicians will be forced to find a way here,” he said, speaking about the risks to businesses that no deal and a disorderly Brexit posed.
Mr Coveney said he though that it may take two EU summits to get a deal “over the line”, including a special European Council meeting in the middle of next month.
Meanwhile, he stressed that the Government would never sign up to a withdrawal agreement that does not protect the Belfast Agreement or follow through on the commitments given by the British in December 2017 and March 2018 to include a backstop in the withdrawal treaty.
“We now need to get down to the business of agreeing the legal text to follow through on those political commitments and that is what the next two weeks will be about,” he told reporters.
Mr Coveney told delegates that here had to be an understanding on the EU side about the difficulties the British have in “selling this proposition” at home that does not undermine the concerns of unionists.
He spoke positively of how a deal could help progress in talks to agree a EU-UK trade deal cover the relationship after Brexit.
“If we get the wording on the backstop, that would inject some much-needed optimism into the negotiations,” he said.
But he warned that there was “no room for ambiguity of language” in the backstop.
The Tánaiste told representatives of about 500 companies at the event - the first in a series of four this month - that the Government had “already pressed the ‘go’ button” on both preparations and implementing contingency plans, including the recruitment of new health and veterinary inspectors and customs officials for Irish ports and airports.
“We cannot wait any longer. Just in case things go wrong dramatically we have to have contingency plans in place,” he told the event that was attended by 12 State agencies and Government departments.
He told businesses that they “must think about Brexit now” and appoint someone in their companies with responsibility for implementing Brexit plans and who will understand the risks.
