Cliff Taylor: Who fears to speak of Irexit?

It is the question that dare not speak its name: if the UK goes ahead and leaves the EU, will Ireland – at some stage – follow? On the face of it, the answer seems obvious: we're not going anywhere.

However, we may yet be faced with the question in an environment completely different to anything we have experienced before.

Despite the calming words of Ministers here and the apparent settling of the financial markets after the initial turmoil, nobody has any idea of the forces which Brexit will unleash across Europe. We have for years been able to ride two horses: maintaining our relationship with Britain and building our links with Europe. Let's hope we can continue to do both, but it is far from guaranteed. If the horses head in different directions, it could get a bit painful for the Irish jockey.

Our EU membership has long been untouchable – and no wonder. The EU may have sparked huge controversy here in the past few years on issues such as the bank bailout, water charges and so on. But the long-term view shows huge development in our economy and society over the years since we joined.

Our membership of the single market in goods and services is central to this and is vital for domestic companies, US multinationals here and also for citizens.

Unlike France or the Netherlands, we have not seen the emergence of a rightwing, anti-EU platform here. But recent years have seen the erosion of support for Europe, and there are voices in Irish politics raising questions. The anti-water charge lobby is indignant about the insistence from Brussels that we must charge. Just this week former Fianna Fáil junior minister Dara Calleary also said that in the wake of the EU's "austerity" programme, he doubted whether Irish people would vote to stay in the EU if a referendum were called. I think Irish voters would vote to stay in, though I doubt they would support further integration.

While we don’t talk about it much, our links with the UK are also culturally and economically vital, centred in particular on the long history of Irish people being able to go and live and work in Britain.

For the moment, Ireland’s tactics are clear – and perfectly correct. We continue to emphasise that we are fully committed EU members, vital in terms of attracting foreign multinationals and investment in our bond market. But we want Britain kept “in” as far as possible, too, even if it is formally leaving the club. This kind of “quasi-membership” has its benefits, and it is far from clear that Britain is prepared to pay the price.

Economic fallout

It could, of course, all work reasonably smoothly, albeit after a long and economically damaging delay. The UK could do a deal to retain access to the EU single market. We could retain the Common Travel Area with Britain, allowing Irish people to live and work freely in Britain and vice versa. Sense might prevail – but we must realise that this could take three or four years to work out at the very least and possibly up to a decade.

But this could all go wrong, too – badly wrong. The calm in the markets may be misleading. This time, the politics is going to drive the market reaction and the economic fallout, the opposite to previous EU crises when late-night meetings were driven by market pressures.

We could face hard choices. What if there is a push by the big EU players for closer integration for remaining EU members in the wake of the vote? It is hard to see an Irish populace, still stung by the bank bailout, signing up to any new treaty which would likely be needed.

Then there is the real risk of events pushing in the other direction, of the rise of anti-EU forces in France and the Netherlands, both with elections next year, leading to some wider crisis about the future of the union and the euro.

Given the apparent lack of realisation among many Eurocrats about the lack of relevance which many people feel Europe has to their lives, little may be done to avert this risk. This is, of course, part of a wider mood of disconnection in industrialised countries, born of a feeling that big business is winning, and trickle-down economics has stopped trickling down.

Maybe some people in Britain did not understand what a leave vote would mean. But isn’t it more likely that most did, that they realised that their standard of living would probably be hit, but they were still willing to take the risk?

‘Social Europe’

If politicians on both sides wanted to do something useful in the wake of the vote, they could try to bring some certainty. They could underline straight away, for example, that EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU will be allowed to stay in the long term, whatever happens. But, no, these people will be pawns in the negotiations to come. So much for a “social Europe”. They could work quickly to sketch out an outline deal involving Britain staying in the single market. Right now, there seems to be little chance of anything happening quickly.

The only Irish strategy now is to pledge commitment to the EU and do our best to push the talks in the direction we want. The Common Travel Area – the ability to live and work in Britain and the absence of a real border on the island – is vital for us.

So is membership of the EU single market. Let’s hope we don’t, at some stage, have to choose between the two.