,
7 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
🚨 BREAKING: Leo Varadkar tonight concedes that in a no-deal, “some” of the checks needed on goods and live animals “will take place near the border” - though “as far as possible, they will take place in ports, airports and at businesses”
Varadkar: UK hasn’t proposed viable alternatives to supersede backstop: “We are open to alternatives, as we always have been. But they must be realistic ones, legally binding and workable in practice. We have received no such proposals to date.”
More: “We don’t wish to see a no-deal Brexit and we will continue our efforts to avoid one, but not at any cost. Unlike some, I see no upsides to No Deal. I do fear it. But I am prepared for it.”
On impact of no-deal: “While medicine shortages occur from time to time, we do not anticipate any significant change in medicines supplies. There will still be food on shelves but perhaps not all of the same brands.”
Quoting a man recently invoked in Westminster... “Parnell believed that our future prosperity depended on us being ‘hopeful, energetic and determined’. They are three qualities which are needed now more than ever as we deal with the challenge of Brexit”
Varadkar speaking at the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce annual gala dinner in Dublin this evening (“It’s hard to believe it now, but when this Chamber was founded in 2011 some people wondered if it was really necessary…”)
While Irish Govt had begun to publicly concede that checks on products would be required somewhere, this is the most explicit admission yet of the unavoidable truth that some of those checks will need to take place in proximity to the currently invisible RoI-NI border
