A chara, – John Wilson Foster (Letters, January 26th) writes that, "No kind of Brexit could break the intimate ties of residence, kinship, economics and, most importantly, Anglophone culture."
I have no doubt that Brexit will do exactly that, or at least, it will force those ties to be dramatically altered and diminished. Ireland and the UK are going in different directions and it won’t be business as usual.
The economic situation will definitely change for the worse as soon as the UK leaves the European Union. It will become more difficult and more expensive to export to and import from the UK.
Irish businesses will have to look to do business with other EU states where no such difficulties will occur.
It is likely that the common travel area will come under severe strain and will end. Ireland’s EU commitments and the UK’s new status will make it very difficult for Ireland to offer residential and voting privileges to non-EU citizens that it won’t offer to the EU citizens. An EU citizen living in Ireland could bring Ireland to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to seek the same rights as the non-EU British citizens.
As a result of Brexit, Ireland has to up its game and engage more with EU states.
Most of the other states are not Anglophone and therefore Irish diplomats, businesses, students studying abroad, researchers, etc, will have to use other languages, even if English is used as part of those new relations.
Mr Wilson Foster may be in for a surprise about how important, or not, Anglophone culture will be for Ireland when there are no other major Anglophone states at the EU meetings, and so on.
By being an Anglophone country, Ireland misses out on a lot of the cultural richness that exists on mainland Europe.
It is too early yet to know what Ireland’s future relationship with Britain will look like but there can be no doubt that it will be changed, perhaps to the dislike and disappointment of many. – Is mise,
SEANÁN Ó COISTÍN,
Trier,
Germany.