Opinion

Soft border Brexit plan is essentially what we already have in place

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The novel concept post-Brexit will be distinguishing between passport-free travel and visa-free travel, with EU citizens entitled to the latter
The novel concept post-Brexit will be distinguishing between passport-free travel and visa-free travel, with EU citizens entitled to the latter The novel concept post-Brexit will be distinguishing between passport-free travel and visa-free travel, with EU citizens entitled to the latter

ONE of the first certainties to emerge anywhere regarding Brexit is that London and Dublin are determined to maintain a soft border. Statements and documents emerging this week indicate to how this might be done, at least regarding the movement of people. Both countries can coordinate their immigration policies via the common travel area, with further security at internal ports, airports and crossings. However, this is essentially what happens already. The novel concept post-Brexit will be distinguishing between passport-free travel and visa-free travel, with EU citizens entitled to the latter (and Brussels hopefully offering UK citizens the same in return.) To stop non-Irish EU citizens settling in the UK, there will be residency checks for jobs, benefits, healthcare and housing. Of course, this is also supposed to happen already - which makes sober proposals for it and outraged objections to it both seem faintly absurd.

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Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes was in more speculative territory with a speech in Brussels. Hayes, who has twice been his party’s Northern Ireland spokesman, said it might be possible to negotiate associate EU membership for the north if the south paid its EU budget contribution. Associate membership is generally taken to mean non-voting access to the single market, which can be arranged in a number of ways. Examples include Norway and Turkey. There are also three cases of parts of a country with this status and they are all close to home. The crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are in practice devolved regions. Could they be our model for a Brexit fudge? Stranger things have happened.

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The Audit Office has completed a report on the public sector voluntary redundancy scheme, funded via the Fresh Start agreement. Media follow-up revealed varying editorial priorities. The BBC website chose to lead with the headline “Staff morale warning over job cuts”, which was almost beyond parody. More newsworthy is that lower morale was the only significant effect auditors could find after 9 per cent staff reductions service delivery actually improved in most organisations. Newspaper coverage preferred to focus on 10 public servants rehired due to their “specific skills”, but who have not had to return any redundancy cash because they are working via agencies or as consultants. More newsworthy is how trivial this is out of a total of 4,000 departures. Did the other 3,990 not have specific skills?

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Orange Order Grand Secretary Drew Nelson, who died this week, has been hailed as a moderniser who brought new thinking to the institution. This is likely to raise eyebrows but it is not merely a case of speaking well of the deceased. Among those paying tribute are PR supremo Austin Hunter, a former head of communications for BBC Northern Ireland and the PSNI. Nelson hired Hunter as a consultant in 2004 and they worked together for six years to shift Orangeism from a religious to a cultural footing, in the hope of making it less absolutist. This argument was never settled inside Grand Lodge and there is now a real prospect of the chaplains taking over.

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There were further raised eyebrows when secretary of state James Brokenshire was booked to address a DUP fundraiser - so much so that he pulled out of the £300 a table Lisburn event. It is surprising that business people will pay to meet the DUP when the party seems to throw itself at companies free of charge. But there should be no surprise at cosiness with the Conservatives, now that the DUP is propping up the government’s slender Westminster majority on an unannounced but self-evident confidence-and-supply basis. The remarkable thing is how little comment this is attracting, on either side of the Irish Sea.

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The Electoral Office is shutting regional branches and centralising services in Belfast, arguing that the internet makes a physical presence near voters redundant. This has greatly annoyed politicians, who always want voter convenience maximised. In a grilling at Westminster’s Northern Ireland affairs committee, MPs led by Ian Paisley jnr avenged themselves by humiliating Electoral Office management over their Belfast parking costs, which are up to £12,000 a year. However, because this point was made to complain about wasting money in one location rather than in several, MPs could not press the obvious question: if being near voters is redundant, why does the Electoral Office need its fancy city centre headquarters? Why not move to an industrial estate, where rent is cheap and parking is free?

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Infrastructure minister Chris Hazzard says his department may consider letting electric cars use bus lanes. If so, it will throw up an unfortunate clash. Electric cars are dangerous to pedestrians and vulnerable road users because they are almost silent. In a bus lane, this makes them particularly menacing to cyclists. Regulators around the world are working to require mandatory, standardised ‘sound generators’ but the UK has so far left this to the EU, whose new rules are not due to be enforced until 2019 - the year of Brexit. Expect to hear more on this subject.

newton@irishnews.com