Leo Varadkar’s government also says there is no proposal to make Irish Sea the new frontier with UK after EU withdrawal

Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said the country will not “design a border for the Brexiteers” as his foreign minister said there was no proposal to make the Irish Sea the new frontier with the UK after withdrawal.



The Dublin administration is unconvinced by the UK’s plans to use technology to maintain the invisible land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which will become a boundary between Britain and the EU after Brexit.

Media reports have suggested the Republic’s preferred option is for customs and immigration checkpoints to be located at ports and airports.

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Varadkar said: “What we’re not going to do is to design a border for the Brexiteers because they’re the ones who want a border. It’s up to them to say what it is, say how it would work and first of all convince their own people, their own voters that this is actually a good idea. As far as this government is concerned there shouldn’t be an economic border. We don’t want one.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin has said avoiding a hard border after Brexit will require “flexible and imaginative solutions”. The foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, told the Irish national broadcaster, RTE: “There is no proposal that is suggesting that there be a border in the Irish Sea.”

Theresa May’s allies in the Democratic Unionist party have hit out at that suggestion. The party’s leader in the Commons, Nigel Dodds, said such a move would be unacceptable to the DUP, which the prime minister relies on to prop up her minority administration in the House of Commons.

He said a sea border “may give the Republic of Ireland a special economic status within Northern Ireland but the heavy price would be new barriers to trade in the UK” for Northern Irish firms.

“This apparent hardening of attitudes within the Irish government is untimely and unhelpful,” said Dodds. “The DUP will not tolerate a border on the Irish Sea after Brexit that makes it more difficult to live, work and travel between different parts of the United Kingdom. The prime minister has already reiterated this.”

The future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is one of the key issues that needs to be resolved by the UK and the EU before talks begin on a new trade deal.

British ministers had proposed using measures such as surveillance cameras to allow free movement between the north and south to continue. But Varadkar reportedly thinks such plans could jeopardise the peace process and in effect restrict movement between the two countries.