Guaranteed: No hard border for North

A “bulletproof” deal hammered out between the EU and the UK now guarantees there will be no hard border with the North, paving the way for a soft Brexit.

The days of border checks appear to have been consigned to the history books after British prime minister Theresa May and the EU finally signed off on a deal around the border post-Brexit.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcomed the deal, describing it as “cast-iron” and “politically bulletproof”.

“This is not the end but it is the end of the beginning, and we will remain fully engaged,” Mr Varadkar said yesterday, adding that everything the Government set out to achieve had been achieved in this first phase of talks.

Sufficient progress has now been made on EU-UK citizenship rights, the British ‘divorce bill’, and the border to move onto the important second phase of talks, which will include the critical issue of trade.

The historic deal was reached after a new paragraph was inserted to allay unionist concerns that the North would somehow be separated from mainland Britain.

Instead, there is now another backstop that provides that — in the absence of a solution — businesses in the North will get “unfettered” access to the British market. This protection is in addition to the paragraph that equally guarantees there will be no barriers between the North and the Republic and therefore no hard border.

Mr Varadkar said the commitment for a free-flowing border post-Brexit was “rock solid” but said he wanted to assure unionists that Dublin was “not trying to exploit Brexit to move toward Irish unity without consent”.

Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said that the fallback position agreed on the North ultimately ruled out any physical border checks.

“There will be, in no circumstances, a need to introduce border checks on the border of Ireland,” he said.

High-placed sources in Dublin yesterday said that the outcome was “close to the status quo” or existing EU arrangements.

“Their [Britain’s] scope will be limited for new trade deals,” said a senior figure.

After an intense few days of discussion, which eventually led to Mrs May catching a 4.30am flight to Brussels yesterday, she conceded that the agreement had been “hard-won”.

“Getting to this point has required give and take on both sides,” she said, but added that the details of the report were in “the best interests of the whole of the UK”.

DUP leader Arlene Foster, who torpedoed the initial agreement on Monday, welcomed the “substantial progress” agreed upon in the 14-page report. However, she claimed there is “still more work to be done”.

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” said Ms Foster.

And the deal may be harder for the DUP to accept after Mr Varadkar last night told RTÉ that they needed to respect Irish views on a united Ireland, a scenario unionists fear with Brexit.

“Unionists and DUP politicians say all the time that they want the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain to remain,” he said. “We respect that. Surely they should be able to respect that we have a different view, that we would like there to be a united Ireland, but only by consent.”

The deal was met with a “cautious and qualified welcome” by the opposition in the Dáil, who warned trade talks will be “economically critical” for Ireland.