Taoiseach Enda Kenny has welcomed the agreement by European leaders in Brussels on Saturday that Northern Ireland would gain automatic EU membership should it ever decide to leave the UK and join a united Ireland.
However, he said that Irish unity would not happen “in the immediate future”.
Mr Kenny made the comments at a press conference in the European Council's headquarters following Saturday's EU leaders' summit on Brexit.
At the summit, EU leaders unanimously approved tough guidelines for negotiations on Brexit, including the guarantee that Northern Ireland could rejoin the EU as part of a united Ireland.
Mr Kenny said the declaration on Irish unity, which was agreed by EU leaders after weeks of effort by Irish officials, was “hugely important”.
One senior official said that Mr Kenny had been pushing strongly for the declaration in recent weeks.
At the press conference, Mr Kenny said that if Irish unity occurred at some stage in the future, “EU membership [for Northern Ireland] is assured”.
However, he added: “Let me be clear - this is not about triggering any mechanism.
“The conditions for a referendum [on Irish unity] . . . do not currently exist, but an acknowledgement of the principle, of the potential in the Good Friday Agreement, is hugely important.”
Asked if the Government would take any further steps towards Irish unity in light of the agreement, Mr Kenny said that a unity referendum could only be triggered by the British government.
“In my view, the conditions do not exist now for a Border poll.
"The value of today's decision is that if at some time in the future that action is taken, a referendum is triggered and a decision made by the people of Northern Ireland, that not only will both governments recognise it, but that the European Council will recognise the entire island of Ireland then as being part of the EU, without Northern Ireland having to reapply.
“That’s a significant legal statement from the European Council for something that may happen at some time in the future, but not in the immediate future.”
The Brexit summit was widely accepted as a significant success for the State, as its priorities in the Brexit talks are now enshrined in the EU’s negotiating position.
The Taoiseach said it was “an important day for the EU, and an important day for Ireland”.
Mr Kenny said that the summit’s outcome was a “huge endorsement of the approach of the Government to this matter.”
He said that a number of speakers at the meeting were “very clear in their understanding of the particular difficulties and challenges Ireland faces.
“I have to say that this bears testament to the huge campaign that the Government has carried out here of strategic engagement with EU member states and the EU institutions over the past 10 months.”
He said the negotiating guidelines “fully reflect our unique concerns”.
However, he added: “This is only the beginning”.
Future relationship
Mr Kenny said the “recognition was there that we should move on now to talk about the framework of the future relationship between the UK and the EU”.
He said this would only happen when “sufficient progress has been made” in the initial phase of the Brexit talks.
He said that the future rights of EU citizens in the UK and British residents of EU countries was “a cause of anxiety to several million citizens every day”.
Mr Kenny also reiterated familiar Government themes about avoiding a hard Border and maintaining the Common Travel Area.
“The political imperative is that there be no return to a hard Border,” he said.
“To make that a reality will require some creative and imaginative propositions.
“So minds will apply themselves to that, from Dublin, London and Brussels, to see what progress can be made on that.”
On the question of the UK’s bill for outstanding liabilities on leaving the bloc, Mr Kenny said: “There wasn’t any discussion about the extent of those liabilities, there was no discussion about figures.”
EU leaders have made clear that the issue of the UK’s exit bill must be addressed before a future trade relationship between the two parties is discussed.
A favourable trade relationship between the UK and the EU is crucial to Ireland’s interests.
However, Mr Kenny was keen to convey an upbeat economic message, despite the threat posed by Brexit.
“Even this week I’ve had engagements with three or four global players who are either setting up corporate headquarters in Ireland or Dublin and others who are investigating whether they would like to site in Ireland,” he said.
Mr Kenny also met an IFA delegation in Brussels this morning.
Decisions on the relocation of the two European agencies currently resident in the UK - the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency - will be made at the European Council meeting in the autumn, Mr Kenny said.
The Government this week launched a bid to attract the medicines agency to the Republic.
