THE British and Irish governments have clashed again on plans for a post-Brexit border, as Sinn Féin and the DUP prepare to meet the EU's chief negotiator to set out their positions.
Irish foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney warned yesterday that the EU is unlikely to accept the UK's latest proposals for avoiding a hard border.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has focused on technological solutions and placing no new restrictions on the 80 per cent of cross-border trade carried out by smaller businesses.
Mr Coveney said if agreement cannot be reached during talks between the UK, Dublin and EU Commission, the 'backstop' plan of full alignment with customs union and single market rules that Mrs May "committed clearly" to last December would have to be put in place.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who wants the whole of the UK to remain in the customs union, said yesterday the government was relying on "technological solutions that perhaps do not even exist".
"One of the most shameful features of the whole Brexit process has been the negligent way that the interests of Ireland have just been cast aside."
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington, the Prime Minister's de facto number two, backed Mrs May's plan but accepted it could be changed to accommodate concerns.
"Clearly we are at the start of a negotiating period and will want to sit down with our EU partners and work through where their concerns, whether legal or technical, are and see how we might together address this," he said.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald last night said Mrs May's intention to leave the customs union and single market contradicts her claim not to want to undermine the Good Friday Agreement.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels, she said the Irish government "must now act to ensure the ‘cast iron guarantees’ they claimed to have achieved in December are now enacted".
Meanwhile, two academics have proposed the creation of a new six-seat Ulster constituency for the European Parliament.
Prof Frank Costello and Ciaran White said it would be a way of maintaining democratic representation for EU citizens in Northern Ireland after Brexit.
