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LAST UPDATE | 20 Aug 2019
DURING A 30 MINUTE conversation by phone with UK Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, Tánaiste Simon Coveney “conveyed disappointment” with Boris Johnson’s letter to the EU.
During the phonecall, which took place today, Coveney also “expressed concern at the lack of alternatives to the backstop”.
There has been a frosty reception to the UK prime minister’s letter to European Council President Donald Tusk, which was released last night, ahead of planned talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron.
Johnson stressed in the letter that his government wanted to achieve a divorce deal with Brussels.
“You have my personal commitment that this government will work with energy and determination to achieve an agreement. That is our highest priority,” he wrote.
Additionally today, Downing Street underlined that there will never be “infrastructure, checks or controls” at the border.
In his conversation with Barclay today, which has been described as “cordial”, Coveney reiterated Ireland’s desire to have an orderly Brexit, while also conveying disappointment at the UK government’s letter to the European Council.
The Tánaiste also stressed the importance of the commitments made by the UK in December 2017.
Coveney said that while Ireland was always open for dialogue, the negotiation was between the UK and EU and made it clear the backstop was designed to protect the Good Friday Agreement and the all island economy and mitigate against the damaging impact of Brexit.
The Tanaiste expressed concern at the lack of alternatives to the backstop in the letter from the UK government and repeated the need for legal certainty on the border issue.
Despite differences, the call was described by a spokesperson for Coveney as friendly, with the Tanaiste and the Secretary of State committing to stay in touch.
Reacting to Johnson’s letter today, Tusk said that the opponents of the backstop inadvertently support the re-establishment of a hard border in Ireland.
Tusk, writing on Twitter this morning, said: “The backstop is an insurance to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland unless and until an alternative is found. Those against the backstop and not proposing realistic alternatives in fact support reestablishing a border.”
“Even if they do not admit it,” he added.
Brussels says the backstop is needed as a fallback option to preserve the integrity of European trade and preserve the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
It was included in the deal reached with the European Union by Theresa May, which was rejected three times by the British parliament earlier this year.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said that it shared the views of Tusk. Johnson’s letter, the spokesperson said, “doesn’t provide a legal, operational solution to prevent the return of a hard border on island of Ireland”.
“It does not set out what any alternative arrangements could be. In fact, it recognises that there is no guarantee that such arrangements will be in place by the end of the transition period,” they said.
Johnson continues to insist he’s ready to leave the EU on the new scheduled exit date of October 31, with or without a deal. The prime minister tweeted this afternoon:
He insisted in his letter that the backstop was “anti-democratic and inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK as a state”.
In addition, keeping the UK in the customs union would prevent London from establishing a trade policy independent of EU rules, he said.
The EU has repeatedly stated that it is not ready to renegotiate the Brexit deal it reached with May.
A government source here said the purpose of the backstop was to preserve the status quo and that “the reality is Brexit itself is a threat to the GFA”.
A Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) spokesperson said that it was an “unalterable fact” that the issue of the backstop needs to be dealt with.
“If Europe and the Republic of Ireland are serious about ensuring and recognising that progress in Northern Ireland is founded on support from both major traditions then it will have to face the reality that the backstop is not the way forward,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile Sinn Féin’s vice-president Michelle O’Neill accused Johnson of “rank hypocrisy”.
“Brexit is incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement and the Tories have shown a total and callous disregard to that agreement and to the democratically expressed wishes of the people of the north,” she said.
“The fact is that the British government has agreed to the backstop and Boris Johnson has voted for it himself,” she added.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke with Johnson for almost an hour yesterday evening, with the two leaders restating their positions on Brexit.
The prime minister made clear that the Common Travel Area, which predates the UK and Ireland joining the EU, would not be affected by the ending of freedom of movement after Brexit, a government spokesperson said afterwards.
The two leaders also agreed to meet in Dublin in early September, with a specific date yet to be confirmed.
Johnson meet with Merkel in Berlin tomorrow and with Macron in Paris on Thursday, ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz at the end of the week.
Meanwhile, this evening the Tánaiste will be in Northern Ireland to meet the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Additional reporting by Dominic McGrath and Christina Finn
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They’re definitely growing in lads pants with the 5 billion pornsites available at the press of a button. Whack away lads, whack away.
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet”.
Sir Isaac Newton.
@The Great Unwashed: “always use a certified electrician to install your power shower” archimedes
@Seamus Mac: always use a registered gas technician for servicing you gas appliances….. “Daniel o Donnell”
@shellakybooky:
“I’d like you to get out”
Wait until gemma here’s about this especially with 5G rolling out
@Chonky Racoon: hears
@Alan McArdle: cheers
@Chonky Racoon: chears!
@Chonky Racoon: Are you in favour of 5g?
@Chonky Racoon:
How safe is 5G?
@Candace: wouldn’t be a fan of it myself.. Not to bothered about it though
@Chonky Racoon: it’s not difficult
@Chonky Racoon: 2
@Chonky Racoon: too
Ah here, I’ve spent so much of the last 30 years of my life with my head in that position doing everything from sewing to colouring to crafting to sketching to painting etc. I probably have those growths :D But no scientist could say with certainty it’s down to those reasons or mobile phone use or anything else for that matter. That’s very flawed research.
@Carol C. Exactly. You could argue it’s from leaning over books in school. Are we going to now say that children and teenagers shouldn’t get an education?
@Carol C.: if you have those growths they probably cod say that.
@Daragh Harmon: “could”
No.
The future is a world full of unicorns :)
I must go out and take the phones of those bulls in the field
Journalists-seems like kids are developing tiny bone spurs on their head from bad posture
Editor-call them horns and lets run with it
Yeah yeah. And if you don’t stop it you’ll go blind.
Dear God there’s no need to factcheck the stuff that snowflakes fall for
Brings a whole new meaning to ‘dick head’
Are horns growing on young people’s skulls because of mobile phones?
Horns, bumpers and licence plates going by the way some of them that I see are crossing busy roads.
Correlation vs causation
Of course we are. It’s called evolution and we have been doing it for millions of years.
Get with the times people and do a bit of evolving.
@Joeber Wallace:
Only if the bone spurs are heritable.
Maybe unproven as is any theory and even so called facts are also open to scrutiny!
As a posit to make the report a bit more proven perhaps it might be worth remembering that new social and physiological effects of modern life impacts societies in many different ways for instance after the Chinese started a comprehensive education system the students developed changes to their eyes that caused them to wear glasses. Eventually, they realised that the cause was them hunching forward in class and they got people to change their reading/writing posture. There is also a genetic component to the distortion of the eyes;
One could posit that hunching close to a small digital screen might have a similar effect in most other countries? In fact this article finishes up with a similar warning to the west; https://mybestcontacts.com/who-in-the-world-has-the-worst-vision-problems/
@sean mcgee: the problem with chinese students eyesight was genetic – they have found that ‘oriental’ people have a problem with myopia and that it is increased by the over use of screen time . some years ago to boost sales of i pads etc (and thereby boost the chinese economy) schools and collages were made to change over from books to ‘electronic learning’ now there is an increase in the numbers of young people suffering with myopia (short sightedness ) this shows up more in oriental people due to a difference in their genetic make up to european and african people . there was an ophthalmologist on the radio the other day talking about this – there has also been a significant rise in the number of under 25′s reporting problems with myopia right across europe .
@Eric Davies: There was a documentary on CGTN that highlighted the problem. It did mention a Genetic component but they also claimed that changing posture reduced the Myopia.
In fact searching the CGTN YT channel for “Myopia” there are a few documentaries about the topic. The latest news short seems to explain the preventative measures they are advising;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zooVz-oPFEQ
@Eric Davies: Thinking further on this it seems that the Western approach to reacting to the Myopia/Bone wear changes seems to be much slower and more argumentative (probably due to certain Industry lobbyists) than the Chinese approach. Yet the west ignores similar studies done in Asia etc. Seems like the Science Media Centre (aka Sense About Science) needs to improve its Science news remit to include more than just a handful of handpicked “Experts” imo
@sean mcgee: we are a host family for chernobyl children and as part of their stay with us here in ireland thay get a dental and eyesight test done at a local opticians . last year the optician was telling us that he is seeing an increase in the number of children and young people with myopia and that it had been linked to excessive screen usage . with regards to the situation re- the chinese schools – apparently the government there brought in a rule to restrict the use of screens in schools to 3 hours per day -(from an average of 7 hours) . it came about from a discussion about a school in donegal that has told parents that children would be using i pads from september onwards and not the traditional ‘schoolbooks’ .many parents objected to this move by the school and were refusing to take part in it . the i pads cost over 500 euro each and had to be ‘backed up ‘ by online text books costing a further 300-400 euro ,and once the course had finished the i pad could not be ‘passed on’ to a younger sibling or other child -so was rendered useless ! i reckon someone at that school was getting a nice backhander from apple or microsoft !!
@Eric Davies: Well done for hosting the Chernobyl Children. I do work for various activist groups re Fukushima and Chernobyl victims. They have a similar program running in Japan for Fuku children.
Its great that Irish parents are quoting best practice from Chinese educational sources! The catch 22 of that is they probably had to access their small screen thingys to find that out! :)
Quite a shocker about the costs to parents and built in redundancy for school required equipment! We used to buy the second hand books cheap but that seems to have gone bye bye!
btw here is a Chernobyl related article and video you night be interested in; ( I also made connections in the UK CC groups and discovered that they have to be careful mentioning any health effects or concerns for same in connection to radiation or they would lose support from the UK Gov who dont believe many health effects were caused by radiation;
https://nuclear-news.net/2013/05/02/chernobyl-london-meeting-27-april-2013-speech-by-tamara-krasitskava-from-zemlyaki/
Keep up Gods work! Namaste!
there not horn -there antenna – its the latest solution to the national broadband plan – instead of digging up the streets to lay fibre cable costing millions to the state – every ‘newborn’ since 2010 has been fitted with their own personal antenna to pick up wi- fi wherever they are !
A little too horny for me!….
@Kate Flaherty: calm down Kate x
Don’t trust anything the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal write about!
A bit too “horny” for me!
Diazien Hossencoft and Linda Henning might have the answers.
We are doomed .
Do I make you Horney…
So the human race is turning into a bunch of dick heads.
Better than hair on the palm of your hand!
Christian right are So going to jump on this..
have your say