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Tánaiste Simon Coveney Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Good Friday Agreement
Coveney says 'we can't alter geography and history' amid increasingly tense Brexit talks
The Tánaiste added that power-sharing needs to be “urgently” restored in Northern Ireland.
7.30am, 22 Feb 2018
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THE TÁNAISTE HAS said Ireland faces “unprecedented challenges” as Brexit negotiations continue.
Addressing an event organised by Columbia University in New York, Simon Coveney said the “creation of the closest possible future connection between the EU and the UK” is in the European Union’s interest and “overwhelmingly in Ireland’s interests”.
‘We cannot alter the basic facts of geography and history. And those facts shape our future in Ireland more than they impact any other country in the European Union.”
Coveney said the outcome of the UK leaving the EU should not “in any way undermine the hard-won gains of the peace process, as exemplified by the Good Friday Agreement”.
In December all sides agreed that the GFA, which officially ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland, must be protected in those negotiations. The British deal with the EU made specific reference to “protecting the operation of the 1998 Agreement”.
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In recent days, Irish politicians have had to defend this stance, after a number of British politicians and commentators said it may need to be reworked.
‘We can’t give up’
Speaking about the deadlock in negotiations to restore power-sharing at Stormont, Coveney said: “We urgently need to see the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly to harness greater and broader Northern Ireland input into how to make the best of Brexit.
Despite the efforts of both governments in recent months, and especially in recent weeks, it is deeply regrettable that there is at present no power-sharing Executive in place. However, we will not give up – we cannot give up.
He added that Ireland remains “more than ever committed to our membership of the EU”.
Speaking about the EU’s relationship with the US, Coveney said the Union “needs and wants the United States as its major international partner – in foreign and security policy, in free trade and investment, in protecting the environment”.
He said the US and UK have a “very strong” bond but that this “should not be an alternative to, or a threat to, the EU-US relationship”.
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Are they talking about forests or the sterile non-native conifer plantations which blight our landscape and threaten the survival of species such as Hen Harrier? Judging the reasoning behind the groups in question I’m reckoning they’re talking about the plantations rather than native or semi-natural woodlands rich in biodiversity.
That’s a great pic of lough Tay in county Wicklow. A member of the Guinness family has a wonderful house down there, although he may have passed away. I have cycled and hiked over these Wicklow mountains and really feel that they should be covered in forests. This land was covered at one time with oak and other trees. The govt needs to get the finger out and start to increase Irish woodlands. If you leave the land alone the trees will come back naturally.
Jim Jameson
Why would you need to be softened up for a Government sale of the collet harvesting rights? Have you seen the appalling Annual Reports over the last few years?
In 2011 they had sales of 259 m and only managed a profit of 19.9m and this is with free land a story wen a massive one million acres.
Worse than this their pension fund has a shortfall of nearly a hundred million Euro. How do you manage that trick with just one thousand employees? The answer is simple ……..make it a publicly owned enterprise and they’ll just milk it for all it’s worth.
See the harvesting rights for up to two billion and let someone else do the real job of managing the business as that clearly hasn’t been done for some time.
We get to keep the land. We get money for new investment in the economy and the workers get their pension funds fixed.
With proper management exports will increase and the State will accrue further profit taxes.
Simple.
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