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Ireland says no-deal Brexit would be ‘crazy outcome’

Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney speaks to Reuters during an interview in Dublin, Ireland, February 15, 2019. (Photo by Reuters)

Ireland has expressed frustration over Britain's continued failure to strike a deal on an orderly withdrawal from the European Union, denouncing as a "crazy outcome" a no-deal Brexit after three years of negotiations between the UK and the bloc.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney made the remarks after meeting with EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier and British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the Belgium capital of Brussels on Monday.

Coveney, who is also Ireland's deputy prime minister, said his country was spending a huge sum of money to protect its citizens in the event of a no-deal Brexit, calling on London to bring “some sense” to the negotiations.

"We are spending hundreds of millions of euros in Ireland preparing for a no-deal Brexit to try to protect Irish citizens. We don't want to have to do that,” Coveney told reporters.

“Of course we want a solution here and yes, there is frustration in Ireland. We have less than 40 days to go to until the United Kingdom is formally leaving the European Union and we still don’t know what the British government is actually asking for to actually get this deal ratified. So, yes, there is frustration,” he said.

Coveney warned that Dublin would not be “steamrolled” in the last weeks of the Brexit talks despite efforts by the British government to depict the so-called Irish border backstop as the only stumbling block to the ratification of the Brexit deal in the UK parliament.

“I think the asks of the British parliament and the British government have to be reasonable ones,” he said. “What we can’t do is essentially remove or change the guarantee and the insurance ... that prevents border infrastructure in the future and replace it with something that is wishful thinking rather than something that is tested.”

The Irish foreign minister also said his country and the EU would not accept a fixed time limit on the backstop clause proposed by the lawmakers in the UK.  

The Irish backstop allows the EU to include Northern Ireland or the entire UK in its customs union in 2020.

The backstop has been described by both London and Brussels as an insurance policy to avoid a hard border between the two Irelands and allow a treaty between the UK and Ireland in 1998, known as the Good Friday Agreement, to survive.

Some fear the measure could leave Britain trapped in EU trade rules indefinitely with no withdrawal mechanism.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted that she needs a time limit to the backstop, a unilateral exit mechanism or a replacement with alternative arrangements to get her deal through the Commons.    


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