My father, God rest his soul, was a very wise man. He used to say that if you shook hands with an Irish police officer, count your fingers afterwards. Trust was at a premium.
The events unfolding in Dublin this week make Dad seem ever the wiser, and I’m sure he’s looking down, having a chuckle at the whole mess the Gardai Siochana, Ireland’s national police force, are in right now. It’s bad enough that just six months ago, the force admitted that it had fabricated the extent of roadside testing for drink-driving, overstating its efforts by some 6.4 million tests. That, in a nation, of 3 million drivers, is one bit of blarney and overstatement. I’m reminded of a time, many years ago, when I was a young reporter and sent to cover the launch of the force’s Christmas campaign on boozy drivers. Instead of total abstinence that year, their slogan was “Just two will do!”
How times have changed — and not just with the Gardai.
The latest scandal brought down Enda Kenny, Ireland’s former Taoiseach, or prime minister. It centres on a campaign by senior police officers, acting in concert with the Department of Justice, to discredit Sergeant Maurice McCabe, a veteran of the force who took on the role of whistleblower in detailing serious Garda malpractices over drivers’ penalty points. The allegations are so serious, and the attempts to blacken McCabe’s reputation so profound, that the government has been forced to set up a judicial enquiry into the allegations and the handling of the affair. That is due to start in January.
The scandal was a key element in forcing Kenny’s resignation, and it has come back to bite the new Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in his driver’s seat. Varadkar leads a Fine Gael minority government, one that governs with independents and small parties by virtue of a confidence and supply deal with the main opposition party, Fianna Fail.
Over the past six weeks, and as the crucial European Union (EU) summit on December 14 draws near, Varadkar and Ireland’s Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, have been warning that unless the United Kingdom provides written guarantees on the future of the Irish border, Dublin will use its veto to ensure that the Brexit talks don’t move beyond the initial three key areas agreed to by the EU27. These areas are the Irish border, the rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom and vice versa, and the amount of money the UK must pay to settle its EU dues. The UK is eager to move to trade, and the sooner the better.
Dublin, for once in its 800 years of dealing with London, has the upper hand — and it is a hand that has the support of the rest of the EU.
Naturally, the Irish are the ones most directly affected by Brexit, sharing the only land frontier with the UK between the Republic of Ireland to the south of the island of Ireland, and Northern Ireland on the top right-hand corner.
One report this week suggests that any hard border security or customs checkpoints would affect 142 separate areas of social policy. Children’s chemotherapy sessions, ambulances responding to road accidents, veterinary checks, slaughtering of animals, tourism, senior citizens’ programmes — you name it and the Brits and their Brexit will knock cross-border relations back four decades and eradicate vital health and social networks for hundreds of villages and communities and more than 100,000 people in an instant. And that’s before a single truck of goods moves either way in come 11:01pm on March 29, 2018.
The Irish say that Northern Ireland has to be in a customs’ union to make the border seamless, even if it means moving the customs border to the middle of the Irish Sea. The Brits say they can’t discuss the border unless the talks move onto to trade. The EU says there’s no talking trade unless the border is solved. And in the middle of it all, propping up the lame duck leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May is the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from Northern Ireland, who are opposed to any concessions or special status for their little bit of the United Kingdom, or any deal that might give ground or sway to the Republic. In other words, what’s good for the UK has to be good for Northern Ireland, and there’s no way there’s going to be a separate customs’ arrangement for it.
All over the weekend, and right up until Tuesday noon hour, it looked as if May might just get the break in the entire Brexit mess of negotiations that she so badly craves.
Fianna Fail had threatened to move a no-confidence motion in Varadkar’s Tanaiste, or Deputy Prime Minister, Frances Fitzgerald. An email suggested that while she was the Minister for Justice, responsible for overseeing the Gardai Siochana, she “noted” that senior Garda officers would be asserting pressure on the whistleblower McCabe.
Fine Gael and Varadkar were prepared to stand by Fitzgerald, and an inevitable defeat on Tuesday meant that Ireland would do into the EU summit as a lame duck member, with a snap general election campaign underway. It was the break that might enable May to convince the rest of the EU to move on.
Over last week, talks between the parties had failed to end the impasse. On Monday night, however, three more emails came to light, making it clear that Fitzgerald had a bigger part to play in the pressuring of McCabe. On Tuesday morning, Fitzgerald had no alternative but to resign, which she duly did, saving Leo from a very embarrassing situation. There is no snap general election. Varadkar will be making the point loud and clear that the Brits haven’t done anything near enough on the border, and there’s no way the Brexit talks can move forward.
Come December 14, May will face the realisation that the likelihood of a Brexit deal is farther away than ever, that the pact she has made with the DUP means that any hope of a reasonable transition deal is likely dead, and she is leading a government that has its hands on the self-destruct button.
One minister in May’s government has gone so far as to suggest that if there are costs associated with a hard border, the Irish government should have to pay. That’s exactly the type of talk that May doesn’t need to hear. But that’s exactly the type of talk that makes Varadkar’s case all the stronger — for the first time in 800 years.
The border will be the undoing of Brexit.
