theguardian.com - The Irish border deal hammered out after objections from the Democratic Unionist party has inadvertently edged Britain towards a soft Brexit deal, political leaders in Ireland have said.
Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said he was delighted with the deal because not only had it delivered an invisible border with Northern Ireland but the DUP clause had unexpectedly delivered a new promise of barrier-free trade between the whole of Ireland and the UK in the event of no deal.
Varadkar pledged that May would have “no closer friend” in the next stage of negotiations on the back of the agreement on the Irish border.
He said it was in Ireland’s interest to help Britain get a deep and ambitious deal because Ireland wanted to preserve the £50bn-a-year trade it does with the UK, its biggest export partner.
He admitted Anglo-Irish relations had been damaged by the fractious negotiations over Brexit, but said that could quickly be repaired.
“I’ll be very frank. Brexit, by its nature, has strained relations between Ireland and the UK. Of course it has. How could it not?” he said. “Our role now is to get through that. I actually think because of this agreement that we have today, because we have the guarantees and the assurances that we sought, Britain will have no closer friend than Ireland.”
He confirmed that under the deal there would be no cameras, customs checks or patrols on the border, something he said everyone north and south of the border should appreciate as a major achievement in the Brexit negotiations.
The 15-paragraph Irish deal also guarantees the Good Friday agreement will continue in all its parts, allows border communities to continue to access EU funding, and means anyone in Northern Ireland opting for Irish citizenship will continue to have rights as EU citizens.
The leader of Ireland’s opposition, who is in a confidence-and-supply agreement with Varadkar’s Fine Gael government, went further. “From the British perspective, it seems to me we are edging towards a soft Brexit, something the Brexiteers may not want to hear, but there are certain realities dawning,” said Micheál Martin, leader of the Fianna Fáil party. (ontinueReading
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