Dublin has rejected Boris Johnson’s suggestion that Britain could agree a broad Brexit deal with the EU next month but sort out some of the details covering the vexed question of the Irish border after leaving the bloc.
The UK prime minister has told colleagues he does not expect to be able to reach a full “legally operable” deal covering the Irish border at a crunch meeting of EU leaders on October 17-18 and that some of the details might have to be filled in later.
But Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, stressed on Friday that Dublin wanted the Irish border question put to rest now and not left open for months or years in the hope that a resolution could be found later.
“We have a commitment from the British government over and over and over again — in writing and verbally — that they would work with us to put the issue and the anxiety around the Irish border question to rest now,” Mr Coveney told the BBC.
He was speaking the day after the UK’s Brexit secretary Steve Barclay said in a speech in Madrid that it would be better to resolve outstanding issues during a transition period after Britain leaves the EU rather than risk a no-deal departure.
One British government official said: “Can we have something that is 100 per cent legally operable in legal text by October 19? Probably not. We need to see some flex on all sides.”
But the “sort it out later” approach has been rejected by the EU, which has repeatedly insisted that Britain’s withdrawal agreement must have an “all-weather” guarantee against a hard Irish border.
The agreement reached by Mr Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May and the EU last year contained a so-called backstop arrangement to avoid the return to a hard Irish border.
Mr Coveney said: “What we are being asked to do by Stephen Barclay and others is replace a guarantee around the border question with a promise that we will somehow do our best to try to solve this issue in the future but we don’t know how yet.”
Mr Johnson has insisted on the removal of the “undemocratic” backstop from the withdrawal agreement on the grounds that, by establishing a customs union between the UK and the EU to avoid a hard Irish border, it would potentially lock Britain into close ties with the bloc.
Mr Barclay, who meets EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels on Friday, has so far failed to convince the 27 other member states that Britain has a viable alternative plan to the backstop to avoid customs and regulatory checks on the border.
However, Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, raised hopes of a Brexit deal on Thursday by saying he was ready to scrap the backstop if Mr Johnson came up with a convincing alternative.
There is far less optimism in Dublin about the likelihood of a Brexit breakthrough than in London, although Irish officials are cautiously encouraged that work is progressing.
The Irish government welcomed a statement this week by Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist party, that it was willing to accept bespoke solutions for the region to avoid a hard Irish border, but Mr Coveney said her move was not on its own a breakthrough.
There is also considerable disquiet in Dublin at Mr Barclay’s warning in Madrid that Ireland could face food or medicine shortages in a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson and Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, are set to meet next week on the margins of the UN general assembly meeting in New York.
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