The Taoiseach has insisted that he and Tánaiste Simon Coveney hold the same view that “sufficient and substantial progress” needs to be made on Brexit by the time of the next European Council meeting in June.
Leo Varadkar said he was happy to allay fears that about differences between them as a number of opposition leaders questioned him over his apparent view that October was the deadline to make progress while the Tánaiste was of the view that decisions were needed by June.
Mr Varadkar said “there is a fashion at the moment to parse and analyse what I and the Tánaiste say, often on different days and in different contexts, and to look for differences”.
“It is not in the interests of the Irish people or the State or us to outline our negotiating strategy in a public forum.”
Mr Varadkar added a lot could happen between now and the Council meeting and “it is our very strong view that we need to see sufficient and substantial progress on Irish issues by the time of the June Council meeting”.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin said he discerned a “slight difference of opinion” between the Taoiseach and Tánaiste and warned that if there was no clear decision by June “then we will have an awful lot less leverage in October when the final settlement issues are being addressed”.
Mr Howlin also said Britain’s Brexit secretary David Davis stated on Wednesday that “most of the technology exists” to solve border problems, and the Labour leader said it was “as if there is some technological magical solution”.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said Mr Davis’s assertion was “the stuff of Alice in Wonderland and I really wish the British would desist from positing these non-starters”.
She asked about media reports of a document “purporting to be an internal EU memo” which she said raised very serious questions about the efficacy of the backstop agreement in December.
Ms McDonald said it was initially described as a “cast-iron guarantee” but “moved to a gentleman’s agreement and then to a political promise and now if this report is right, some are questioning its viability”.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the Taoiseach’s statement about an October deadline had caused significant confusion and the Tánaiste “has been trying to row this back since then and is insisting that any failure to reach a deal in June would be an enormous threat”.
He asked if the Government had completed any study on the implications for Ireland of the UK being in the customs union but outside the Single Market and added that “no regulatory alignment is possible without working political institutions in Northern Ireland”.
Mr Varadkar said that Secretary of State for Brexit David Davis made many comments “on many different dates” but he noted reports that the UK would put forward an alternative text to Ireland on option C, full regulatory alignment in Ireland on both sides of the border.
Ireland’s view was that “there cannot be a technical solution to the Irish border challenge. It requires a political and legal solution.”
The Taoiseach also said the lead official heading up Ireland’s negotiations “told me that he did not recognise what was contained in the article”. Mr Varadkar added that many people would put across positions in newspapers and “we need to take them as they come”.
