“As things sit at the moment we are going to suffer big time.”
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness are united on the need for Northern Ireland to seek a change in its status within the European Union in an effort to avoid what McGuinness describes as “a disaster for the people of Ireland”.
According to the Irish Times, McGuinness will urge the European Union to grant Northern Ireland associate or even full membership status, a proposal that Taoiseach Enda Kenny has pledged he will argue strongly for at European level when talks over a post-Brexit deal between the EU and the UK commence.
“As things sit at the moment we are going to suffer big time,” McGuinness said.
“Theresa May says ‘Brexit means Brexit’, but so far as we are concerned Brexit means disaster for the people of Ireland,” the Deputy First Minister added.
McGuinness says that his proposal has the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with whom Sinn Féín share power in Northern Ireland, while together with Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan, Enda Kenny has assembled a team of almost 100 people specifically to work on Brexit and its potential implications in Ireland.
To that end, Kenny will chair an All-Ireland civic forum, with representatives from north and south of the border, to discuss Brexit in Dublin on November 2.
“It is really important that we have all of the voices reflective of Ireland over a series of meetings,” Kenny told The Irish Times.
“I am going to invite to that all of the political parties who wish to attend and I don’t mean that I expect a grandstanding performance from each of them.
“It is more of a listening exercise from political parties because we need to hear the voice of retail, the voice of trade, of commerce of the construction sector, education and all of these areas, north and south,” he added.
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