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Farmers, food processors and local residents trading and travelling across the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland have received renewed assurances from British prime minister Theresa May and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe that no infrastructure or checks would interfere with their daily business if there is no Brexit deal, but it remains unclear how this could happen.
On a visit to Belfast this Tuesday, May outlined her conditions for a renegotiation of the so-called backstop agreed with the EU to avoid a hard border in Ireland, but rejected by British MPs.
There will be no hard border
She must now find "alternative arrangements" and has insisted that this will exclude checks both along the Irish land border, and between Northern Ireland and Britain.
"There will be no hard border, including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls," she said.
"When the European Commission proposed a version of the backstop which involved creating a customs border in the Irish Sea, I successfully resisted it – and I have ruled out any return to such a suggestion," she added.
Existing areas of north-south co-operation, such as "keeping the island of Ireland disease-free for animals and plants," must also be preserved, the prime minister said, adding that "technology could play a part".
Good Friday Agreement
May said these principles were aligned with her support for the Good Friday Agreement and committed that "people on either side of that border will be able to live their lives as they do now".
She stopped short of describing solutions that could be agreed with the EU, which has already rejected a renegotiation of the existing backstop.
We will not be putting those checks in place
At the same time, Minister Donohoe was speaking before the Oireachtas finance committee, saying that Ireland would resist any checks or infrastructure on the border in case of a no-deal Brexit.
"In the absence of an agreement, we will not be putting those checks in place," he said.
Yet he acknowledged that "if the UK becomes a third country, the goods that are taken into our country from there will need to be checked".
New negotiation
Pressed by TDs Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin and Paul Murphy of Solidarity-People Before Profit to explain how this could work, Minister Donohoe acknowledged that the EU single market would have to be protected.
"In that kind of a scenario, we would then have to engage in a further negotiation that has three parties to it, ourselves, the [European] Commission and the UK, regarding how the consequences of a disorderly Brexit would be managed on our island," he said.
While assuring that the Government would then continue to oppose a hard border, he admitted that he could not predict the "trade-offs" that would result from this negotiation.
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