Simon Coveney: ‘Brexit debate in the UK has been frustrating’

A year out from Brexit, Simon Coveney admits the ideal solution would be for Britain to change its mind but this is not likely.

This has left the Tánaiste, by default, in the business of securing insurance against a potentially disruptive departure of a big neighbour from the EU, and protecting “a precious status quo” of a peaceful island.

Just nine months as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, a role that under Taoiseach Leo Varadkar came with responsibility for Ireland's role in Brexit negotiations, Coveney has helped broker a fallback position, the now famous "backstop" .

This ties the UK to a legal deal that, in the event of no deal on Brexit, keeps Northern Ireland under EU economic and regulatory rules to avoid a visible Irish Border re-emerging at a geographic line where the two unions diverge.

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Where Britain failed to offer detailed solutions to keep physical infrastructure off the Border, the Government’s strategy has been to secure “an insurance mechanism” in their place. The aim has always been to put Ireland “at the centre of these negotiations”, and to lobby the other remaining 26 EU member states to generate solidarity around Ireland’s concerns, says Coveney.

“We need to really focus on making sensible and practical progress towards a managed Brexit whereby we guard against any of the potential significant downsides for Ireland of those negotiations going badly.”

Two busy days

Coveney was speaking in his Leinster House office after two busy days that saw him expel a Russian diplomat over the Salisbury chemical attack and shift his position to support abortion up to 12 weeks – a significant political move ahead of the May 25th referendum on the constitutional ban on abortion.

The start of detailed technical negotiations this week between UK and EU officials, including his own diplomats, on the Border has created some breathing space, allowing the Tánaiste to reflect on a busy few months in Brexit negotiations.

While nothing is clear on the post-Brexit border – beyond an emergency plan to ensure that something will not happen – Ireland’s biggest win has been in securing a potential veto to block the UK’s final Withdrawal Agreement under a catch-all “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” clause.

“We don’t see this in the category of victories and losses,” said Coveney, disliking that characterisation of the achievement. “This is a process.”

Yet the country’s top diplomat scores as a success the Government’s campaign to put Ireland “front and centre” in negotiations, and working to ensure other EU states “understand the vulnerability and exposure of Ireland”.

"That strategy has worked. There isn't a single country in the European Union questioning Ireland's positioning on Brexit. They are all supportive."

While European Council president Donald Tusk's "Ireland-first" strategy and the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier quoting the importance of EU unity around Ireland in Irish shows the solidarity on one side, Coveney recognises that British feathers have been ruffled on the other.

This was especially so when Dublin pushed for the "backstop" in the December political agreement, causing a ruckus between the minority Conservative government at Westminster and the Democratic Unionist Party keeping it in power.

Problems

“Both sides are trying to find a way forward on Brexit, and sometimes that means that there has been tension in terms of finding a way forward and the sequencing for how you solve those problems,” he said.

“We insisted in December that the Irish Border issue needed a credible, political response in that agreement, and we insisted on forcing the issue, and I think that worked.

“If it hadn’t been for the December agreement I don’t think we would have been able to take as firm a position now in relation to insisting on a backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement.”

Acknowledging the internal tensions in London, the Tánaiste says Ireland has tried to be as helpful as possible given that it is “not an easy issue for the British government”, but Dublin has had to be “very consistent and very firm”.

“We cannot allow, as an unintended consequence of Brexit, for there to be a fallout on the island of Ireland that is damaging to the peace process.”

He said the negotiating strategy has “proved to be the correct one even though it certainly has created tensions at times”.

"Ultimately this is about defending our national interest; it is about defending the interests of people on the island of Ireland. Don't forget that people in Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit. Some did, but the majority didn't."

Trade negotiations

Coveney rejects concerns of the Opposition in the Dáil that the Border issue is being kicked into the weeds of complex trade negotiations on the future permanent EU-UK relationship, and that Ireland has lost leverage as a result.

He stresses that without another no-hard-border solution the backstop stands, and without the backstop there will be no Brexit treaty.

“This is a negotiation that is going to go on for some time. You don’t expect to get everything you want on day one, day two or day 10.”

He points to June – the European Council’s next deadline for progress on the Border issue – or October –the deadline for a deal on the overall Withdrawal Agreement – as upcoming negotiating milestones.

Earlier this week Coveney visited Sweden where he spoke "very directly" to two government ministers about the country's border with Norway that is often touted, mostly by British politicians, as a model for the Irish Border.

“It is not seamless at all,” he said, noting the long queues to cross it and border-crossings closures. That model is “not a runner”.

“If that’s the best international border that people can refer to, well I am not interested in it for Ireland.”

Anybody who knows me would know that I am a pretty straight talker on these things

More broadly, he does not see a bespoke technological solution for the Border, regularly mooted by London, as an remedy here.

"I don't think the Irish Government is likely to be convinced that technology can solve this issue," he said, dismissing proposals floated by UK Brexit secretary David Davis as recently as last weekend.

Closeness

The solution is “a political one” in either the backstop or “some other future political agreement that negates the need for Border infrastructure because of a closeness between Britain’s market and the [EU’s] single market,” he says.

Dublin will, he says, continue to encourage negotiations to push Britain towards “a customs union partnership”, the closest possible relationship with the single market and a very consistent regulatory environment with Britain.

“If the British government maintains a rigid negotiating position and on leaving the customs union and single market, well then the likelihood of having to use the backstop increases.”

Coveney says the coarseness of the Brexit debate in the UK and accusations of hidden agendas and Dublin trying to manufacture a united Ireland by stealth have been “frustrating” at times. “Anybody who knows me would know that I am a pretty straight talker on these things.” He takes pride in Dublin’s consistency around the need to protect the peace.

The Tánaiste believes that it will take far longer than the agreed post-Brexit transition period from March 2019 to December 2020 to negotiate a future free trade agreement between the EU and the UK.

“That doesn’t mean that that couldn’t be extended if it was necessary to extend it,” he said, suggesting flexibility on the transition period, in contrast with the EU which wanted to put an end-date on it.

Coveney thinks it could take closer to four years than two to broker a sector-by-sector free trade agreement. “These things don’t happen quickly; they are complicated.”

Concessions

Recent UK concessions, including last week’s agreement on the need to include a legal text on the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement, and growing British parliamentary support for a soft Brexit reflect political changes in London. But does he see any potential scenario where Brexit might not happen?

“It’s hard to see it, but who knows,” he said. “Politics can change very quickly, but at the moment I think we have to plan for negotiating the best possible outcome for Ireland from a Brexit.”