Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Derry’s Bishop Donal McKeown seems to be showing far more common sense on Brexit’s reality (‘New Brexit report on Ireland asks crucial questions – Derry bishop’ IC 15/12/2016) than do Britain’s parliamentary members and lords.
In welcoming the Lords’ report on Brexit’s possible impacts on Northern Ireland, the bishop rightly says he is glad at least some people with influence in Britain are concerned about how Brexit might affect both parts of Ireland and Ireland as a whole, but makes an absolutely vital point when he says that the Lords’ proposals might not be possible.
The reality is that if Britain quits the EU, it will not then be able to make a deal with Ireland alone about how to tackle the issue of the border – the agreement of our 26 European partners will also be essential.
It is difficult to see the Common Travel Area surviving Brexit: predating these islands’ involvement in the European project, it has for decades subsisted within a community committed to freedom of movement. But if Britain rejects this EU founding principle, how can it remain within a common travel area with a country which remains committed to it?
Is it possible that Northern Ireland could – with the Republic and 30 or so other countries – continue to abide by this pillar of the European project, while the rest of the UK turns its back on its neighbours? It is hard to see that the North has any other option if it is not to see its economy devastated, but this would surely mean a hard border not across Ireland, but across the Irish Sea.
Hardly surprising, then, that Dr McKeown says the Brexit vote may yet turn out to be a real changing point in terms of where the people of Northern Ireland see their future.
Yours etc,
Emma O’Leary,
Swords, Co. Dublin.