Taoiseach to discuss Brexit with Arlene Foster

DUP leader Arlene Foster maintained a hardline Brexit stance over the weekend as she prepared to travel to Dublin to meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Ms Foster will meet the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin on Monday afternoon and the Taoiseach in the late evening.

A Sinn Féin delegation is also meeting the British prime minister Theresa May in London on Monday evening.

It was reported on Sunday that Ms Foster told a Conservative MEP Ashley Fox that the likeliest outcome from the Brexit talks was no deal.

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Ms Foster, according to the London Observer, told Mr Fox that the DUP was "ready for a no-deal scenario, which she now believed was the likeliest one".

She also reportedly said that the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator whom she met in Brussels last week was “difficult and hostile”.

Judging by the fixed position that Ms Foster held to over the weekend, her meetings with Mr Varadkar and Mr Martin are likely to be challenging encounters.

While there has been speculation that a possible EU-UK compromise would involve regulatory checks of goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, Ms Foster made clear that she would see such a proposal as a threat to the integrity of Northern Ireland’s constitutional link with Britain.

‘A lie’

Ms Foster in an article in Saturday's Belfast Telegraph said the EU had put a "spin" that the reported offer would mean Northern Ireland having the best of both worlds with "full access to the EU single market and full access to the UK single market".

“That was a lie. We would not,” wrote Ms Foster.

She insisted what was on offer posed a constitutional threat to Northern Ireland. “Under the EU’s plan, Great Britain-based businesses would have a barrier when they would seek to trade with Northern Ireland. Such a barrier cuts right to the heart of what is at stake here. The United Kingdom is one nation. There should not be international-style borders within it,” she added.

“I am a unionist. I became involved in politics to build a better Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom,” she wrote.

“I would not tolerate a trade barrier between England and Wales any more than I would tolerate one between Northern Ireland and Great Britain,” added Ms Foster.

Ms Foster noted how Ms May’s “previous female predecessor, Margaret Thatcher” regretted signing the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. “We do not want nor need the regrets of another prime minister. We want the right choices made,” she wrote.

Added Ms Foster, “The DUP’s actions this week are not as some have suggested about ‘flexing muscle’. This is no game. Anyone engaging in this in a light-hearted way foolishly fails to grasp the gravity of the decisions we will make in the coming weeks.”

DUP ‘isolationists’

“I fully appreciate the risks of a ‘no deal’ but the dangers of a bad deal are worse” she wrote.

And ahead of her Dublin meeting, she wrote, “We want a deal which respects Northern Ireland’s constitutional position but one that also works for our nearest neighbours in the Republic of Ireland.”

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, deputy leader Michelle O’Neill and Conor Murphy MLA will meet Ms May on Monday evening.

In advance of that meeting Ms O’Neill said the “DUP are isolationists and on the wrong side of the argument and the democratic will of the people”.

“Arlene Foster is prepared to drive our economy over the cliff in pursuit of her narrow agenda with no regard for the future prosperity of the people of the North who will pick up the tab for her reckless Brexit,” she said on Sunday,

“The majority of citizens north and south will not stand for any land border on this island,” she said at the annual Seán Treacy Commemoration in Kilfeacle, Co Tipperary.

Ahead of the meeting with the British prime minister the Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the “toxic deal between the DUP and the Tory party has deepened the Brexit crisis and stalled progress in re-establishing the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement”.

Ms McDonald said the “EU have offered a unique solution for our unique set of circumstances” but that the “DUP have set their face against such a deal”.

“This from a party that has blocked access to abortion and marriage equality. Rights that are available in the rest of Ireland and Britain,” she added.

“The DUP have aligned themselves with the hard right of the Brexiteers at the cost of imposing a hard Border in Ireland, undermining our agreements and crashing out of the EU without an agreement,” said Ms McDonald.

“The deal between the DUP and Tory has undermined progress. The British Prime Minister must place the Good Friday Agreements, progress, and unique circumstances of Ireland above any deal with the DUP,” she said.