Sometime in the summer of 2019 as the stand-off between the British Government and the European Commission – then represented by the urbane Frenchman Michel Barnier – intensified in the wake of Boris Johnson’s election as Conservative leader and prime minister, the Irish Government changed its tune, subtly but significantly.
For the previous two years of endless Brexit circumlocutions, the consistent line from Dublin had been that it would not make preparations for border checks in Ireland. No checks were anticipated; no preparations needed to be made.
But as the possibility of a no-deal Brexit loomed the Government – faced with the reality of its obligations to secure the single market and the expectation of the European Commission that it would do so – began to admit that checks might be required after all.
The warnings became blunter as the summer wore on. Eventually, in September, the taoiseach Leo Varadkar eventually told a dinner of the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce that if there was a no-deal Brexit, “There will be checks on goods and live animals and, as far as possible, they will take place in ports, airports and at businesses.”
“But,” he added, “some may take place near the Border.”
He said that the Government was “working out the details of this with the European Commission.”
A few days later, Simon Coveney – then as now Minister for Foreign Affairs – told reporters at the Fine Gael think-in in Co Cork that the Government needed “to level with people about what a no-deal Brexit actually means”.
“We shouldn’t be sugar-coating anything. And in that scenario [a hard Brexit] we would be forced to protect Ireland’s place in the single market by having some checking system somewhere away from the Border than can reassure the rest of the EU . . . that the integrity of the single market is protected,” he said.
Protecting the EU single market’s borders is part of the price for membership. And faced with the either/or options that it had tried since 2017 to avoid, the Government in Dublin was suggesting that it would prioritise the Republic’s place in the single market ahead of maintaining an open border with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
To be clear, no infrastructure at the Border itself was planned or contemplated. The common travel area between the two countries was to continue. But facilities to ensure that goods entering the single market (ie, the Republic) met EU standards would have been necessary.
That was a step that was never required. Boris Johnson reached an agreement with the EU, with the Northern Ireland protocol solving the problem of maintaining the open border in Ireland even though the UK was leaving the single market and the customs union.
But now the UK is resiling from the device that solved that conundrum – and the so the problem, and the threat, raises its head again. Somewhere in a Government office – perhaps not this week, but at some stage before long – a senior official will reach into a drawer or click on a long-dormant file called something like “Secret – plans for border checks in Ireland”. And ministers will receive a briefing that they never wanted.
Speaking to RTÉ today, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said questions about checks on goods were “jumping ahead quite a number of few steps”. And that’s right. But both Ministers and officials know where a total breakdown in relations between the EU and the UK leads – to a very difficult place for Ireland.
