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The case for a dedicated Minister for Brexit is growing according to Fianna Fáil spokesman for Foreign Affairs and Trade Darragh O’Brien. However, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed said that creating one Ministry oversimplifies an issue which needs a full government approach instead.
“As with all of the debate on Brexit, there is no silver bullet. There is no one issue,” Creed said in the Seanad on Tuesday. “There is a simplicity about the suggestion that a single Brexit Minister would solve all the issues. It is so enormously complex across all Departments that it oversimplifies the issue. The issue requires a whole of Government approach and not just saying it is the responsibility of Deputy Michael Creed, Deputy Mary Mitchell O’Connor or whoever. The issue has an impact on practically every Department. Even in the UK, there are three wise men. David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are leading their charge. Let us see how they progress it.”
While everyone seems to be in charge, no one is in charge
Speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, O’Brien said that his “concern is that, while everyone seems to be in charge, no one is in charge and the current Government attitude seems to be that we should just hold tight and things will work out.
“The role of this minister would be to lead and co-ordinate the response to all of the cross-departmental issues that are now presenting.”
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Regardless of whether or not a specific portfolio is created for Brexit, the strategic response by the Government will have a defining impact on Ireland’s rural economy, according to IFA president Joe Healy.
“The Government must use its strong relationships with the UK and EU to influence as positive an outcome to the negotiations as possible, with the maintenance of a positive trading relationship with the UK, the retention of a strong CAP budget, and the maintenance of free movement of people as key priorities,” Healy said in a presentation to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs on Wednesday.
House of Lords
Elsewhere this week, two former Taoisigh, John Bruton and Bertie Ahern, gave evidence to a House of Lords select committee inquiry into the impact of Brexit on Anglo-Irish relations. They warned that common external tariffs between Ireland and the UK could ruin the food industry both north and south of the border.
The bureaucracy would be enormous
“The inter-relationships are enormous,” said Ahern. “Tariffs could cripple a huge amount of the food industry; the bureaucracy would be enormous – the amount of people involved, the add-on costs of running that kind of system. My concern is people would start going elsewhere for markets and it would really work totally against the entire industry and that would be a huge loss.
“Groups like the Kerry Group are 40 years in existence and they have built enormous connections between Ireland and the UK generally. To set up a whole bureaucratic system with high tariffs would cripple the industry and that would be devastating.”
John Bruton added that “the supply chain of the food industry is exceptionally interconnected and, if we get into a situation where the common external tariff has to be imposed, that will require us to introduce customs controls of some kind to collect that tariff and, on the UK side of the border, people would have to certify the origins of the produce.”
UK economy growth
It is interesting to note that, in the first official assessment since the referendum last June, the UK’s economy has grown by 0.5% in quarter three. The UK’s Office for National Statistics said that the pattern of growth continues to be broadly unaffected following the EU referendum with a strong performance in the services industries offsetting falls in other industrial groups.
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