This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The British and Irish governments have signalled that a Brexit deal is very close after a flurry of official talks and visits on both sides of the Irish border, and a positive statement from the Democratic Unionist party after a separate meeting with the Brexit secretary.

Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, and David Lidington, the UK Cabinet Office minister, said on Friday evening that recent progress in negotiations could resolve the backstop imbroglio and produce a deal this month.

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Their upbeat assessment came as Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP, which props up the Tory government and has threatened to block Theresa May’s deal over the Irish border issue, also indicated a deal appeared close.

Foster said: “Goodness, we have been here on a number of occasions and I think we are close to a deal that will work for Northern Ireland, that is what we want.”

Only two weeks ago, the party was threatening to vote against the budget and other domestic legislation if the Brexit deal did not reflect its position.

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Lidington said Downing Street would stand by commitments it has given on the Irish border and was committed to resolving final difficulties as quickly as possible, paving the way for an orderly withdrawal from the European Union.

He was speaking to reporters after a joint meeting of the British-Irish intergovernmental conference which sought to kickstart talks on the resumption of power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

Coveney said negotiating teams had worked hard to allay British fears over the backstop, a device intended to avert a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in the absence of a Brexit deal.

Neither side gave specific detail but Coveney hinted that the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, was willing to accommodate certain British concerns,adding that London needed to show more flexibility.

Informed sources, however, indicated that a deal over a customs-arrangement for the entire UK was a “live issue” which would assuage fears over a hard border.

Ireland’s justice minister, Charlie Flanagan, and the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, also attended the Dublin meeting.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dominic Raab (centre) at Warrenpoint Port. Photograph: Warrenpoint Port/PA

Foster spoke in Belfast after meeting the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, who earlier on Friday visited Warrenpoint Port to see the border for himself before meeting Northern Ireland parties at Stormont.

The DUP leader said there was no need to return to the “border posts of the past” when the UK left the EU, but reiterated her party’s opposition to any arrangement which differentiated Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

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“We want to see an exit from the EU that is sustainable … one that works for everyone in the UK and indeed one that works for our neighbours in the republic of Ireland as well,” she told the BBC.

Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s leader in the House of Commons, who also attended the meeting, struck a harder tone in rejecting any new regulatory checks between the UK and Ireland.

Dodds also raised a new issue over the European court of justice. “If Northern Ireland is subject to EU single market regulations, then it will also be subject to the ECJ in some form as the arbiter of those regulations. This position leaves Northern Ireland a rule taker from Brussels but also importantly it creates a democratic deficit on an important part of our economy – agriculture and manufacturing.”

Raab reiterated that the government would not sign up to anything “that would threaten the economic, the constitutional, let alone the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom” but refused to rule out any new regulatory checks at the Irish border, suggesting a possible showdown between the government and the DUP. “We are engaged in a negotiation process,” he told reporters.

Raab’s visit to Warrenpoint Port was the first of any UK minister to a Northern Irish port since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Warrenpoint is one of the five main sites of seabound exports and imports between Northern Ireland and Britain which, at low tide, is just a few hundred metres from the republic. “He was engaged and the most knowledgeable I have see on this roster of people we are meeting in relation to Brexit,” said one local business leader.

Sinn Féin was less impressed and accused the Brexit secretary of dodging meaningful dialogue with the local community. “Dominic Raab is like a thief in the night coming in and out, not providing opportunity, not just [to] me personally but the people I represent, and the media should have the opportunity to be able to ask the hard questions,” said Chris Hazzard, the MP for South Down.