Simon Coveney: British government must adopt reasonable approach to Brexit impasse
The Tánaiste has played down speculation in the British media of a last-minute Brexit deal at a European Council meeting next month.
Simon Coveney said he doesn't see how a meeting of the European Council of Ministers on October 17 could redesign an agreement of the complexity of the current withdrawal agreement which took over two-and-a-half years to agree.
He insisted that the current withdrawal agreement is the best way forward and that removing the backstop - which was a crucial part of the balance and compromise of the agreement - in the absence of workable alternatives just isn't an option.
But even in a no-deal scenario, he said the border issue, the financial settlement and citizens rights issues will still have to be addressed.
Speaking in Millstreet, Co Cork, at the launch of an air ambulance service, Mr Convey said the British government must adopt a reasonable approach to the Brexit impasse.
"Surely it makes sense for us to work on the basis of the withdrawal agreement, to get into a transition period for the next two to four years, to work out all the details of what’s needed for a future relationship and in doing that, trying to avoid the use of the backstop in the first place but knowing that we have a fallback default position that's temporary in nature but solves the complex problems of Ireland," he said.
"Surely that makes sense and it’s not an unreasonable ask by Ireland or the EU of the new British prime minister.
"We have spent many, many months looking at alternatives to the backstop but the backstop was actually designed because of British red lines.
It was a British ask that resulted in the backstop - not anybody else - and so for us for the British prime minister now, largely for political reasons in the UK, to say the backstop must go for them to support the withdrawal agreement essentially means that they are asking us to fundamentally undermine an essential element from an Irish perspective of the withdrawal agreement without having anything credible to replace that - and that’s just not something we can do.
He said the government and his officials will continue to work day and night to try and find a way of moving the process forward to avoid a no-deal scenario.
"We want to work with UK on that we want to contribute to the negotiations between the EU in the UK," he said.
"But the British government’s approach has got to be a reasonable one.
"We have got to work on the basis of the withdrawal agreement as opposed to trying to break it up."
He said he plans to bring a Brexit memo to Cabinet tomorrow morning updating his government colleagues on Ireland's state of preparedness, and on plans for a new public communications campaign around Brexit which is about to be rolled out.
But he said the government has not yet arrived at the point of declaring a no-deal scenario as inevitable.
He said they are assessing the situation on a daily basis and will make a collective decision about whether the country moves from the default position being "a deal" to the default position being a no-deal over the coming weeks.
"The EU and Ireland are absolutely on the same message here.
The solidarity is strong," he said.
"We all want to get a deal that avoids a no-deal Brexit for obvious reasons but we have to do it on the basis of answering difficult questions that Brexit throws up.
"As I’ve said over and over again what we can’t do is essentially dismantle the withdrawal agreement, take the backstop out of it knowing that that opens up a whole series of problems for Ireland, without having answers as to how we deal with those problems with alternative arrangements.
"And so far the alternative proposals don’t stand up to scrutiny."
