Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the European Council in Brussels on October 18, 2018 | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images Theresa May told Irish PM Brexit backstop ‘can’t have time limit’ Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Europe minister, says May has reaffirmed a pledge to avoid a hard border.

Theresa May told her Irish counterpart that the "backstop" agreement to avoid a hard border in Ireland “can’t have a time limit,” Ireland's Europe minister said, apparently contradicting a statement the prime minister made to MPs on Monday.

Helen McEntee told POLITICO that the U.K. prime minister gave the assurance in a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and herself at the European Council summit on Wednesday.

“I think reassuringly from our own meeting with the prime minister yesterday, she again reaffirmed her commitment to an Irish backstop — that it must be within the Withdrawal Agreement; that it must be legally operable; and that it can’t have a time limit,” she said.

Brexit talks are deadlocked over the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The U.K. and the EU agree the need for a legal guarantee — the backstop — to avoid a hard border in the event that the two sides cannot reach a permanent trading relationship that would resolve the problem.

However, May has insisted that the EU’s proposal — to keep Northern Ireland within the bloc’s customs territory — is unacceptable. She has said consistently that any backstop arrangement, were it to be needed, must be “temporary.”

For example, May told MPs in the House of Commons on Monday: “It must be the case, first, that the backstop should not need to come into force; secondly, that if it does, it must be temporary; and, thirdly, while I do not believe that this will be the case, that if the EU were not to cooperate on our future relationship, we must be able to ensure that we cannot be kept in this backstop arrangement indefinitely.”

Her comments to Varadkar and McEntee appear to contradict this demand for a time-limited backstop.

They will concern opponents of May’s Brexit strategy within her own party, who are concerned that the U.K.'s own backstop proposal — which would replicate many elements of the EU customs union — could become an indefinite arrangement.

The U.K.’s proposal is for a "temporary customs arrangement" (TCA) with the EU, replicating most elements of the existing EU customs union and severely limiting the U.K.’s room for maneuver in trade negotiations with third countries.

The EU has “engaged constructively” on the proposal, a senior U.K. government official said, but Brexiteers, including former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have demanded to know what the deadline of the TCA would be.

If the U.K. government has committed that the backstop “cannot have a time limit” then even if its TCA backstop proposal is ultimately approved by the EU, it risks being shot down by Conservative Brexiteers in parliament, who could argue that it risks an indefinite de facto customs union with the EU.

In the interview, McEntee said that negotiators have been “making progress” but insisted that any “customs shared space” is “very much associated with the future relationship.” The EU is insisting that its backstop proposal remain written into the legal Withdrawal Agreement, even if the TCA is proposed as part of the future relationship talks that will follow.

The U.K. on the other hand wants the TCA to be written into the Withdrawal Agreement as the legally binding backstop.

May’s official spokesman said Tuesday that the U.K. Cabinet has discussed “a mechanism to clearly define how that backstop will end,” raising the prospect that instead of a firm end-date, conditions or tests could be set that would have to be met before the backstop would cease to apply.

Downing Street did not respond to a request for comment.