When Ireland applied to join the then European Economic Community in 1961, it did so largely out of pragmatic necessity – the UK’s application left it with, as Seán Lemass saw it, a choice of joining or diplomatic and economic isolation. While formally independent, we were in practice joined at the hip, although as Garret FitzGerald astutely forecast, membership would also be a psychological liberation from what he called “a neurotic relationship with Britain”. Not to mention, a subservient/dependent relationship – when De Gaulle vetoed the UK in 1963, Ireland’s application went into cold storage.
The contrast today is striking. Forty-three years after accession, the relationship is profoundly different, one of cordial allies, a bilateral partnership of equals within the EU, though one of us deeply embedded, the other, always semi-detached, and now on the way out. No question now of following the UK out as we followed her in.
But Ireland will be the state most affected both by the departure and the shape of any deal reached with the UK on re-engaging. That is why we must be engaged deeply in shaping the EU team’s mandate and in the team itself. Our diplomats can and must play a central role both as “privileged interlocutors”, assisting our partners to understand our UK friends as perhaps no one else does, and articulating our specific interests.
That our interests and those of the UK do not necessarily entirely coincide should be acknowledged from the outset. It would be remiss, for example, not to seek to take advantage of opportunities to attract investment to this country from, say, London-based banks which lose their right to trade in the EU.
And while it is clearly in our mutual interests rapidly to restore trade links once broken, preferably without tariffs, British access to the single market will require it to accept a degree of free movement of labour that is clearly now anathema to its voters – no deal is possible without it, eastern European states rightly insist. And there's the not insignificant entry ticket to the market which Norway now pays. But perhaps we can take comfort from the surprising volte-face by leading eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan in the immediate aftermath of the vote, in his suggestion that free movement of labour would have to be part of any trade deal. That he does not expect EU immigration to the UK to decline. Tell that to Boris!
That is particularly important in the context of the common travel area between Britain and Ireland and across the Border, which Unionist Leavers insist, with boundless dubious optimism, can survive Brexit without a return to border controls. Short of a far-reaching trade deal incorporating rights to migrate across the EU, however, our negotiators will almost certainly have to make a difficult, separate case to our partners for special arrangements between these two islands.