Businesses and people alike are concerned about the potential for Brexit to bring about a ‘hard border’ between Ireland and the UK.
The debate within the UK has been reignited as senior political leaders examine the issue of a physical border between Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland. Currently, trade is frictionless and traffic can cross the border unencumbered. The Brexit vote has thrown these assumptions into disarray.
“We are worried about border checks and whether that will make our supply chain flow less fluidly,” said Ben Story, the head of strategy and marketing at Rolls Royce.
“We built our whole supply chain assuming a kind of a globalising world and an open world.”
The relatively small Irish economy faces major disruption as it may lose free-flowing trading rights with its largest trading partner. Dublin has been keen to cement a commitment to a frictionless crossing in the Brexit negotiations.
Many in the UK, sensing a weak hand, may use the border as a bargaining chip.
"We're not the ones who are going to be putting up the physical border,” notes Kate Hoey, Brexit leader and Labour MP. "If it ends up with a no-deal, we won't be putting up the border - they'll [the Republic of Ireland] have to pay for it, because it doesn't need to happen."
The Trumpian tone of these remarks has elicited a suitably heated furore, as many critics drew parallels to the president’s own prognostications over the extraction of Mexican payment for a wall along the US Southern border.
The entire debate around the Irish border has unearthed some unwelcome rhetoric. Some have tied the loosening of the crossing to the development of the peace process and warn that a resurrection of controls will bring a return to the Troubles. One writer even worries that a hard border may bring about war.
The impact of a hard border is uncertain. New issues surface frequently since the referendum vote in 2016. For example, in June 2017, the British Medical Association said that a hard border may impact healthcare.
"Northern Ireland is too small a health economy to efficiently provide some smaller specialist services," said Dr John Woods of the BMA, “the Republic of Ireland is our natural partner for many of these, allowing both countries to provide benefits to patients on both sides of the border."
Unfortunately, it is likely that further such issues will emerge into the future public debate. Questions abound regarding logistics, security, processing time, visas and, of course, money. Currently, the Irish believe that London has produced insufficient detail around the border. There are vague promises to mimic the techno-border which separate the EU from Norway and Switzerland. But these countries are in the Customs Union, which the Conservative Government seems keen to leave.
Few examples indicate uninterrupted trade.
More forward-thinking businesses are assessing this situation as they would any other risk factor. Brexit is almost a year away and governments have yet to outline a serious plan or vision as to the character of the border. As such, one must assume, at least for the near term, the worst and slower trade between the two countries.
This is not a fundamental rethink for most businesses as they are accustomed to cross-border trade in less open economies, which exist as a matter of routine outside the EU.
“What Brexit has made us do is ... step back and think about that a little more,” states Story, from Rolls Royce. “Going forward we need to be thoughtful and careful about where we make investments, where we build capabilities, how to build in redundancy.”
