Irish PM Admits ‘Mistakes’ in Post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol
Loyalists opposed to the Northern Ireland Protocol protest in Newtownards town centre, Northern Ireland, Friday, June 18, 2021.
James TweedieIreland’s prime minister has admitted his government “made mistakes” in talks on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit future.Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, who took up the post of Taoiseach in December after two years as deputy or Tainaste to Micheál Martin as part of a power-sharing deal with Fianna Fail, tried to share blame with the UK.“I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes in the handling of Brexit,” the leader said. “There was no road map, no manual, it wasn’t something that we expected would happen and we’ve all done our best to deal with it.”Varadkar said he hoped to visit Northern Ireland in the coming weeks and looked forward to “meeting with all the parties, and reaching out to all parties and all communities in an effort to find a solution.”“When we designed the protocol, when it was originally negotiated, perhaps it was a little bit too strict,” he admitted.“I think there is room for flexibility and room for changes and we’re open to that and up for that,” Varadkar said, adding that was also the position of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice-President Maros Sefcovic.Varadkar headed the Fine Gael government which insisted that Northern Ireland, the exclave created in 1921 by the post-independence partition of the country, stay within the European Union (EU) common market after the UK left the bloc.Then-foreign minister Simon Coveney insisted that a ‘hard border’ — which Brussels threatened to erect on the pretext of preventing smuggling from the UK — would breach the 1999 Belfast peace agreement. The British government proposed technological solutions, which the EU and Dublin rejected.The resulting Northern Ireland Protocol to the UK’s withdrawal agreement created a customs border between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.That led to unrest among the loyalist community in Northern Ireland and Downing Street threatening to invoke Article 16 of the protocol, which allows emergency measures to deal with “disruption of trade” or “societal difficulties”.The Taoiseach said he had talked to Unionists on the matter in the past.
“I do understand how they feel about the protocol,” Varadkar said. "They feel that it diminishes their place in the Union, that it creates barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland that didn't exist before.”
But he also backed the position of Republican parties which opposed the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU, who have renewed their calls for a ‘border poll’ on reunification in the hope that the issue will swing public opinion in their favour.“Brexit was imposed on Northern Ireland without cross-community consent, without the support of the majority of people in Northern Ireland,” Varadkar claimed, adding that the EU “diminished barriers and diminished borders between north and south” and was “a great reassurance to people who come from a nationalist background.”Citizens of the UK and Republic of Ireland have enjoyed unrestricted freedom of movement, residency and permission to work for a century now under the bilateral Common Travel Area agreements.British Conservative MP John Redwood, a staunch Brexiteer, welcomed Varadkar’s admission, and called on the EU to relent on its application of the protocol.“Glad Ireland now admits they and the EU made mistakes with the Northern Ireland Protocol disrupting GB to NI trade and damaging the UK Union. So will the EU now end its intransigence and drop the Protocol?” Redwood wrote.Varadkar — who in 2019 urged Sinn Fein MPs elected in Northern Ireland to end their boycott of the British Parliament in a bid to force a re-run of the plebiscite — said he now accepted Brexit, with regret.He insisted that while both unionists and nationalists felt the protocol “separated” them from the UK or the republic, it was only intended to prevent a “hard border” and protect both “human rights” in Northern Ireland and the European Single Market — his “red lines”.
