Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is safe to say that the October European Council was an anti-climax. If we had hoped for any new proposals on Brexit, or any breakthrough in the negotiations, I believe we were all disappointed. This is a classic negotiation tactic. If one does not want to give more ground, or is unable to give more ground, one plays for time.

What we saw at the October summit was incredible. The British Prime Minister again offered nothing new. The British Prime Minister again demanded that the EU rather than the British should make new concessions. Previously Mrs. May has been accused of having spent two years negotiating with her own party to come up with her politically acceptable set of proposals for the Tory Party - the Chequers proposals - as if she did not subsequently have to negotiate with the EU 27 at all.

When Mrs. May proposes changes, as she has recently done in her speech to the UK Parliament, it is as likely to be one step forward and two steps back. Theresa May has contorted her position from last December. I have already said this to the Taoiseach during earlier questions. Last December there was a clear commitment to a Northern Ireland backstop agreement. However many times we repeat this, Mrs. May is certainly now moving her ground on this and doing complex manoeuvres that seem designed to disguise the fact that she is walking away from the solemn agreement that was clear and unambiguous last December.

Crucially for Ireland’s concerns, the British Prime Minister is seeking to transfer the risks associated with Brexit to Ireland. I made this point to the Taoiseach earlier. It is a fundamental point. Mrs. May has proposed a UK-wide Brexit backstop so that there is no need for the Northern Ireland-only version. The EU has agreed to this option, but rightly requires a Northern Ireland-only version in the legal text. This is what was expected from last December and it is still the position. The UK Secretary of State, Dominic Raab, has suggested that extending the implementation period is an alternative to the backstop. Clearly it is not. A longer transition, however, should be acceptable as the alternative to actually triggering the backstop, as long as the legal backstop exists. Prime Minister May has argued that the UK must not be kept in either a backstop arrangement or in a transition period "indefinitely". That is unacceptable, and if there is to be a backstop at all, it must have permanent effect. Again we see a significant shift from the December commitment.

The risk for Ireland now is that we will be asked to accept some diluted form of the backstop. Only last week I was rounded on by one or two spokespersons from the Taoiseach's side of the House for daring to suggest that such options were even being discussed in Europe. Now those comments are out in the open. The Labour Party warned that we must not allow the Irish Border to be part of the final horse trading at the end of these negotiations between the EU and UK. Just two weeks ago, Prime Minister May spoke very important words in Parliament about her "profound responsibility" to the Good Friday Agreement and how life on both sides of the Border in Ireland must be allowed to continue as it does now.

If the British were truly committed to the Good Friday Agreement, we would have seen a separate legal agreement on the table by now. For a while now I have told the Taoiseach that I am sceptical about seeing a legal version coming from Britain in relation to the December agreement. The Taoiseach had said that it was coming and that it was promised. By mixing it in with the other Brexit issues, Ireland’s concerns are always at risk of being part of a basket of negotiating positions in the final talks.

The Taoiseach's approach has failed to resolve the Border issue in advance of this final end game discussion. Last year the Taoiseach had promised that the commitment to a backstop was "bulletproof", "rock-solid" and "cast-iron". Quite obviously that is not the case because the backstop is the single major issue left to be resolved in the negotiations. While there are other issues to be discussed, when it comes to the crunch, this is the single blockage issue now. Deadlines for agreed legal texts on this matter have repeatedly been missed.

I have no doubt about the firm commitment of Mr. Michel Barnier’s negotiation team to Ireland’s demands. I have never doubted that. I believe there is solidarity in the other EU 26 for Ireland's insistence on no hard border. This is what I hear again and again. This, however, is not the point. We now see the British Government trying to wrangle a deal where it does not agree a legally binding and potentially permanent backstop. At the end of this period, the Taoiseach may well be asked by our European partners to choose between no deal or no backstop. The core issue in the backstop negotiations is that the risk associated with the backstop is not transferable and we need to be crystal clear about this. Either Ireland takes the risk of no backstop agreement, in the hope that the future relationship negotiated between the EU and the UK will be so close that border controls will be meaningless, or else the UK agrees a permanent backstop arrangement and takes the risk that this would never be invoked because the negotiations would arrive at a point where the relationship between the EU and UK is such that a border is unnecessary. This is the binary nature of the choices. The binary nature of this risk reduces the scope for us to produce any innovative solution to the dilemma facing Prime Minister Theresa May.

We need the Government to reaffirm that Ireland will, at this point, insist on no deal rather than allow any dilution of the legal certainty and permanency of the Northern Ireland backstop. If there is no deal, I believe a successor Labour Party government in London will make the agreement that we are seeking. The British Labour Party is committed to remaining so close to the Single Market and customs union that we would not have to trigger any legally stated backstop.

Is the Government now fully prepared for end game negotiations? After March, is it fully prepared for potentially months of a no-trade deal with the UK and a hard border, temporarily? If this happens, are we really prepared for what might happen at midnight on 29 March 2019? There is no doubt that the Government will come under immense pressure from business to avoid a no deal scenario. We will then be faced with a real dilemma, and it will be a real dilemma for the Taoiseach.

Will we fudge the backstop and sacrifice our political commitments to Northern Ireland? All of us in this House need to be alert to the level of risk that will arise in these critical final months. We will all come under pressure because Brexit will harm jobs and livelihoods. A temporary no deal scenario, even if it only lasts for a few months, will destroy businesses and end jobs. It will be a major shock to Ireland’s economy, but we have to be prepared to weather that storm because the alternative is genuinely worse. If we do not - all of us - hold firm on our demand for a potentially permanent, legally operational backstop, we take the risk of reinforcing and copper-fastening partition on this island. Twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement, with the flourishing of all-island economic activity and the great improvement in relations between the people, North and South, east and west, even if the risk of a hard border is low we should not take that risk at all.

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