The Taoiseach has described the June 23rd referendum on Britain’s EU membership as hugely momentous and the most important for Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Enda Kenny made the remarks on a visit to Belfast to urge voters in the North to remain in the EU.
Speaking on Monday at Ulster University’s Belfast campus, the Taoiseach delivered a speech ahead of a panel discussion with academics and student leaders.
“The future is best served by voting to remain a member of the EU,” he said.
Mr Kenny claimed it was not credible to suggest that nothing would change at the Irish Border – "from Dundalk to Derry" – if the advent of Brexit. And he warned that he could not determine what other EU leaders' attitudes would be to future dealings with the United Kingdom.
Hard Border
“Can anyone credibly suggest that nothing would change if that became the western border of the European Union?” he said. “We remember when it was a hard Border. We remember the delays, the cost and the division.
“One of the most beneficial effects of the peace process and our common membership of the EU has been the virtual elimination of that Border,” he said.
The Fine Gael leader said a vote to leave would be bad for the economy, trade, Border arrangements and farmers.
He spoke of a collective pride that peace in the North is “now coming into maturity” and then of the risks and challenges facing the future.
"The prospect of Northern Ireland being outside the EU is one we very much wish to avoid," he said.
Mr Kenny said that a Leave vote would mean he would be the “only political representative from these islands at the European Council table”.
Top table
“There will be nobody there – no voice at the most powerful table on our continent – to represent or speak for Britain, for Scotland, for Wales . . . or for Northern Ireland,” he said. “In a complex, modern world, we must always be at the table.”
Mr Kenny said the EU played a very constructive role in fostering peace in the North, provided a framework for co-operation and put significant funding into peace programmes.
He spoke of continued EU membership as offering the “stability and certainty” that investors like to see. “The alternative, by definition, can not, does not and will not.
“For Northern Ireland, continued stability depends on the continued success of the peace process and access to the support and markets that have been an intrinsic part of EU membership for the North.”