Sir, – Ever since 1990, we have been told that our Common Travel Area (CTA) arrangement with the UK, which isn’t even a formal international agreement with legal status, prevented us from being full members of the Schengen Area Accord with the not inconsiderable potential benefit of border-free travel.
Surely, almost five years after Brexit came into being, in January 2020, the time has come to ask what is preventing us from full participation in Schengen as well as maintaining the CTA?
Wouldn’t that be a good start to a new, closer relationship with the Starmer government, something that would also be welcomed in Northern Ireland, a win, win, win for London, Dublin and Brussels?
What is holding us back, Taoiseach? – Yours, etc,
Cliff Taylor: Meet the budget’s real winners: A family of five on an income of more than €70,000
‘He called Ukraine his home’: frontline fighters recall Irish soldier Robert Deegan killed by Russian shelling
Josh van der Flier: ‘I’m very blessed that I’m still going. Hopefully I can be like Cian Healy’
Two delicious Chinese takeaway meals easy to make at home
DONAL DENHAM,
(Ambassador, retired),
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.