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TODAY MARKS THE 10-week point until Brexit. The manner in which the UK government chooses to leave the EU after 47-years of membership is still undecided despite 27 other countries dedicating more than two and a half years to negotiations centred around British red lines.
The possibility of the UK choosing to leave the EU without a deal is still very real and so in Ireland we cannot take our minds off preparations.
There are few contingency plans that will totally cancel out the damage of a no deal Brexit, there are merely mitigation measures to soften the blow.
‘Ugly and difficult’
A hard Brexit, if the UK chooses one, will be ugly and difficult. That is why we need businesses to ensure that the next 70-days are used to be as ready as they can be.
The government’s central portal for this is gov.ie/brexit. Here businesses will find the first steps to the training and supports available across the country. Customs training has been particularly well attended in recent weeks for firms trading with the UK who haven’t had to complete customs declarations before.
The Revenue Commissioners have also spoken by phone with an additional 10,000 businesses to get them an EORI number, without which a firm will not be able to trade with the UK.
There are nine steps that all businesses, large and small, should take now:
It feels a bit strange for me to have to keep stating this, but I have read some commentary this week that was vague, to say the least, on the fact that Ireland will remain a fully committed EU member state after Brexit.
That is the country’s number one contingency, our EU membership and all of the security and support it brings.
Simply put, Irish businesses will continue to have full access to the biggest single market in the world after Brexit, UK businesses will not. Our EU membership is the cornerstone of our economy and that will not be changing.
Leaving the single market and customs union is the UK’s choice.
Overnight change for the UK
The deal negotiated between the UK and EU gives British business the transition period until 2021 where everything would stay the same while a future trade deal is being negotiated. If the UK government and Westminster chooses a hard Brexit and rejects that deal, then they reject this transition period and choose overnight change.
Therefore, a like for like comparison between the UK and Ireland on no deal preparation is somewhat redundant as we will not be starting from scratch in Ireland. Our EU membership will be there in the case of a hard Brexit and that will bring vital supports for the most exposed and worst hit sectors.
We will not be dragged out of the single market and customs union for convenience and will protect our EU membership.
I said at the start of July that our work with the European Commission on the twin objectives of protecting Ireland’s place in our single market whilst also preventing infrastructure at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is happening.
Inferior backstop alternatives
That work, for the case of no deal, is ongoing and there are no easy answers. What is apparent is that any answers we find will be far inferior to the backstop and will badly hit the all-island economy.
That is why the backstop and the Withdrawal Agreement are so heavily supported in Northern Ireland. In fact, I have been struck in recent meetings and by recent polls that showed me support for the backstop in Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, has grown in recent months among all sectors and communities.
The backstop is overwhelmingly supported by business, farmers, unions and employers in Northern Ireland. This gets very little recognition in the Brexit debate in the UK.
A lot can happen in politics in ten-weeks, but ten-weeks is a very short time in business.
The time for a ‘wait and see’ approach has passed for business. Companies, particularly small and medium enterprises, need to act but they are not alone. There are multi million Euro supports available including training, grants, loans and expertise on mapping supply chains and markets.
If your business hasn’t taken the first steps on being Brexit ready, the state agencies and EU supports are there for you. The time to act is now.
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
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