The Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin has warned that an emergency budget is likely to be needed if there is a no-deal Brexit in March, suggesting that he would support such measures as well as any emergency legislation required to deal with a British crash-out.
Mr Martin is in Brussels where he attending a meeting of the Alde group of European liberal parties on the fringes of the European summit.
“In the event of a no-deal Brexit, all bets are off, in terms of budgetary matters, in terms of emergency legislation,” Mr Martin told journalists. “So clearly emergency measures would have to be taken on the Irish side very quickly.”
Asked if this included an emergency budget, Mr Martin replied: “I would think so, without doubt. You’re looking at a significant hole in the budget, in our exchequer figures, if the quarterly review that was published yesterday [by the ESRI] is accurate. We’ve no reason to believe that it’s not. There would be very serious issues arising on a number of fronts for the country.”
“Hopefully we won’t get to that, but we don’t know,” he said.
Mr Martin strongly backed the stance of the Taoiseach in ruling out any reopening of the withdrawal agreement by changing its legal provisions on the backstop.
“Absolutely yes. That is the Irish position, and it is the European position as well,” he said. “That any clarification that arises in terms of the backstop would be of a political nature – give assurance that this is temporary, that it may never come into operation and that an alternative operation will be put in place as quickly as possible and that would be the collective ambition of all of the EU states.”
Asked what Fianna Fáil was getting out of the renewal of the confidence-and-supply agreement, Mr Martin replied, “This isn’t about Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael – it’s about the country. The bottom line is we are facing a huge threat.”
Mr Martin said it would be “highly reckless and irresponsible” to have an election now.
Mr Martin said that the situation has “to a certain extent gone out of control – I mean the British prime minister couldn’t put the vote to parliament, 20 British ministers have resigned, there’s been three Brexit secretaries, there’s been two foreign ministers. It’s fairly unstable. I don’t think we can take chances in Ireland on that.”
