The relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the UK must be “reset” in the wake of next week’s election there, the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce has said.
Echoing calls made at last week’s British-Irish Council meeting in the Isle of Man, the Irish-UK body urged that the next occupant of No 10 Downing Street must attend such gatherings twice a year.
There were “huge opportunities” for co-operation between Dublin and London “whether it is in energy, or climate, or research, or a host of others,” said Paul Lynam, the chamber’s deputy director general.
The lack of prime ministerial attendance at the British-Irish Council has long been a source of complaint, with Gordon Brown the only one to attend a full meeting in 2007, while Rishi Sunak attended a dinner on the first night of last October’s meeting.
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The chamber said the resetting of the relationship involving ministers and officials from departments on both sides should begin within six to nine months, but businesspeople and others should also be directly involved.
Carefully avoiding expressing an opinion on the outcome of the July 4th election, the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce has made considerable efforts to build ties with Labour leader Keir Starmer and leading figures in his party.
It welcomed the signals that a Labour administration would seek to reach a new sanitary and phytosanitary deal with Brussels that could remove many of the trade obstacles left by the earlier Trade and Co-Operation Agreement affecting Northern Ireland/British trade.
Mr Lynam also hoped that the next British government would lay out a white paper of its own detailing the kind of relationship that it wants to have with the EU in the future “rather than being dictated by loud noises from different corners of the UK”.
“It would be a good thing if London said this is the type of relationship that we envisage having in the medium and long term. What businesses craves is certainty. I think we’ve been uncertain for a while,” Mr Lynam told The Irish Times.
Pointing out that over 40 per cent of the UK’s exports go to the EU, the chamber said that Ireland was still a bigger export market for the UK than Brazil, India and China combined, a fact that is little known in Britain.
“Leaving the EU has made exporting from the UK to the Single Market far more cumbersome,” said a British-Irish Chamber of Commerce report launched in London laying out the organisation’s view of the post-election landscape. “One of the incoming government’s first priorities must be to undertake a comprehensive review of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU to remove unnecessary trade barriers.”
It said this should cover VAT co-operation and import charges, along with work on emissions trading and the environment and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) agreement, saying all of this would boost trading ties.
“Isolationism does not create prosperity at home. International trade has always been important to the UK economy, but with the UK now outside the EU Single Market we believe it is essential to continue to build on recent trade agreements to ensure British businesses can expand in the global marketplace.”
Accepting that Brexit may present opportunities for the UK outside of the European Union “there is little debate that the UK’s exit from the EU will create additional hurdles for the bilateral economic relationship between the UK and Ireland”.
The pressures placed on the relationship between Dublin and London by Brexit need to be tackled now by changes at all levels to ties at political, ministerial and other levels.
Pushing for changes so that the relationship can “flourish in the years ahead”, the BIIC said the British-Irish Council, the parallel British-Irish Inter-Governmental Council and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly must be strengthened.
