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,
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DONAL DENHAM,
(Ambassador, retired),
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
